The current Indian Premier League has exposed the pundits who pontificate that T20 cricket can be played successfully only by the big hitters and not the meek who play according to the book.
At this season’s IPL, players in the measure of New Zealand batsman Kane Williamson, who must be the most technically correct, along with Indian batsmen Ambati Rayudu and KL Rahul finished as the highest run-makers in the top four while sloggers like Kieron Pollard, Chris Gayle, Rohit Sharma, Andre Russel and Glen Maxwell have finished right down in the ranks. While Williamson, Rahul and Rayudu finished the qualifying round matches securing the second, third and fourth slots respectively, the biggest smasher of them all Kieron Pollard fell into the 44th slot with just an aggregate of 133 runs from nine matches. Maxwell with an aggregate of 169 runs from 12 games ended up taking the 38th slot while Gayle took the 18th position with Rohit Sharma 23rd and Russel 27th in the batting ranks. Another let-down case was Brendon McCullum who aggregated just 127 runs from six games.
To further expose the failures of the big guns, 20-year old Indian batsman Rishabh Pant took the number one slot in the batting rankings with an aggregate of 684 runs made with the help of 37 sixes and 68 fours.
Pant’s 37 sixes outweighed the number of sixes hit by Gayle, Sharma, Russel, Pollard and Maxwell all put together which stood at 34. Pant played for the Delhi Daredevils in the 14 qualifying round matches.
The most surprise package though was Williamson who took the second slot in the rankings with 661 runs from the 14 matches with eight half centuries made with the help of 26 sixes and 54 fours. He captained the Sunrises Hyderabad minus any household names which took the top slot in the team rankings at the end of the first round.
Interestingly Williamson was only a stop-gap captain in the absence of David Warner who was taken out of the Sunrises Hyderabad team after he was banned by the Australian cricket board for ball tampering in a Test against South Africa.
Rahul whom many branded a player fit only for five-day Test cricket took the third position with 659 runs by striking 32 sixes and 66 fours while Ambati Rayudu finished in the fourth rank making 586 runs with the help of 33 sixes and 52 fours in the14 matches.
For the pin-up boy of Indian cricket Virat Kohli, the occasion marked a failure by his own standards as his side Royal Challengers Bangalore failed to qualify while his total contribution was 530 from 14 matches.