Champions’ League – 2009: The sorry Indian perspective

The IPL teams that qualified for the first edition of the Champions League failed to impress. Our expert takes a look at their performances…

The Champions’ League 2009 was held in India and it was widely believed that all three Indian IPL teams would qualify for the semi-finals and one of them would go on to win the title. What happened was a rude awakening. Despite the fact that the IPL commanded much bigger outlays and could get the best players of the world, the Indian teams were outclassed by other lesser fancied teams, some of whose total salary disbursements could be lower than the IPL related payment to a single big-name player. It proved that a close-knit club would often prevail over hotchpotch combinations, despite all talks of acclimatization difficulties and the “playing away” problems. This scenario could, however, change as the club culture builds over the years. In this article, I will have a look at the Indian clubs’ performances.

In the preliminary rounds, there were 20 matches. Out of these 20, one match was between two Indian IPL clubs (RCB and DD) and is taken out of the analysis since it does not require a big-hundred IQ to conclude that an Indian team would have won this match!!! DC played 2 matches, RCB and DD each played 3 matches and this makes it a total of 8 matches played between an Indian club and foreign club. Let me summarize the results below.

Out of 8 matches, the Indian IPL teams won 3 and lost 5. At the beginning of the tournament, one could have got 25 to 1 odds on this happening. There is no doubt that the Delhi pitch abruptly changed from a good batting wicket into a bowler’s paradise. However, that does not explain the very poor performances of the Indian teams.

The irony is that when they won, the Indian teams won handsomely (See DD’s and RCB’s wins). They lost many matches they should have won, especially the RCB (vs CC), DC (vs ST) and DC vs T&T matches. A team was unable to defend 180, despite top quality bowling attack; another team scored 127 in 20 overs without being dismissed. A team allowed last over heroics by an unknown player to defeat them. The list is painful to read if one is a supporter of IPL clubs. I am fortunate in that I do not belong to this category.

It was fortunate that this happened last year. This year, with so many unsavoury things happening, uncomfortable questions might have been asked.

The individual players were hot one day and listless the next. There was lack of consistency by the teams concerned. The way Trinidad played despite the absence of big-name players was an eye-opener.

One possible reason could be the pressures for teams playing at home although the concept of home teams is a myth for clubs. It is quite possible that the Indian teams would do much better this year in South Africa. Hopefully, lessons should have been learnt. The two new Indian teams this year, Mumbai and Chennai are also excellent teams.