IPL Day One Summary

The thing about Twenty20 is that you only have a limited time to strut your stuff, to show what you can do, to justify the time and money that has been lavished on feeding, housing and entertaining you. It would be all to easy to write-off these performers as shaggy-haired or mongrels of dubious pedigree performing tricks for whichever owner rewards them most.

So credit to the undoubted star of IPL Day One who gave such prolonged entertainment to the Cape Town crowd. In an energetic show, he covered every blade of grass, showing the kind of fitness and eagerness in the field required to excel at Twenty20. His reluctance to leave the field may yet mean he loses some of his match feed but that can be forgiven as the exhuberance of long-haired youth.

The rest of the opening day was a bit of an anti-climax. Unfortunately Setanta’s live coverage of the cheerleaders was too often interrupted by some nonsense involving a bat and a ball. The commentators too were inhibited from reading out their lists of adverts by the necessity of describing what was occurring on the field. And Ravi Shastri’s stand-up routine was sadly cut-short by a chap with a coin.

Still, there’s time for things to pick up. I’m particularly looking forward to Yuvraj the Poodle on Day Two. I think he is a shoe-in for Best in Show.