IPL AWARDS - PART 1

Every major sporting event is often followed by the customary set of awards and the IPL will be no different. Apart from The Purple Cap and The Orange Cap, the IPL also annoints the most promising Indian u23 player. RP Singh, Matthew Hayden and Rohit Sharma take a bow - all 3 awards are well deserved. 

They say its never a good thing to reward mediocrity but this blog disagrees. So for the sake of naming and shaming the less publicised achievements of the 2009 IPL, please see attached :

MOST OVERRATED APPEARANCE IN IPL (FINALLY)

ANDREW FLINTOFF - toothless with the ball and harmless but to a lesser degree with the bat, CSK's owners must be wondering if they did the right thing signing the overweight pedalo professional from Lancashire. $1.55 mio for 6 weeks' work paid pro rata saw Freddie earn a hell of a lot more than he was worth. He was not a landslide winner here though and the runner's up award eventually went to KP

MOST EAGERLY ANTICIPATED DEPARTURE FROM IPL 2009 (FINALLY)

KEVIN PIETERSEN - a top score in the 30's, a mistimed switch hit, a couple of ducks  and a few poor decisions as captain would not have helped other RCB team members shed a tear when it was time for KP to join his England team back in blighty. That RCB reached the final was despite KP, not because of him. RCB cocked up their selections on a regular basis at the start of IPL 2009 and as captain KP would have played a role in that as well. Good riddance I say ....

MOST DISAPPOINTING SHOW FROM A BIG NAME

SANATH JAYASURIYA - 221 runs @ 18.4 with the bat and 7 wickets @ 23.3 might be enough to satisfy lesser players but I think its fair to say more would have been expected from the Mumbai stalwart. He's never gonna retire, so lets hope next season brings with it new fortunes for the little blaster. You may be wondering why KP and Freddie haven't won this award and the answer is simple - The Poms can't win everything, it wouldn't be fair to the other crap players.

BIGGEST DLF MAXIMUM

Yuvraj Singh hit local boy Albie Morkel for a DLF-er at Supersport Park that cleared the corporate entertainment suites and connected the floodlight pylon half way up. That can't be beaten. 119m if the television network is to be believed - to me it looked even bigger. This award will be treasured as much by him almost as much as the other thing he would seem to have won : Preity Zinta's heart ....

WORST TEAM

KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS - Sure, it seems an easy award to allocate. But this award is included here purely so I can gloat. This blogs previous home, nominated Semi Finalists and Wooden Spoonists before a ball was bowled. To see how far off I was, simply click here to compare your initial selections with mine. McCullum sucked and so did Buchanan. Ganguly played 1 decent innings and never completed it. Ishant could not hold up the attach by himself and KKR's best player in this format, Charl Langeveldt was only given 1 game. Need I say more ?