I am happy to report that my team, the Royal Bengal Tigers, have won three from three and we therefore head the log standings.
First up we played the dangerous Lahore Badshas led by former Pakistan captain, Inzamam ul-Haq, whose team we convincingly beat by eight wickets. Our new signing, New Zealander Hamish Marshall, was in good form scoring a brilliant 88 not out.
In our second match – against the Delhi Giants, another Kiwi and our captain Craig McMillan, led the way with a swashbuckling 69.
In our third match against the Mumbai Champs, we nearly came unstuck, with former Proteas ODI player Johan van der Wath in good nick with the bat. As coach, I am pretty happy with events so far, but it is early days and there is still plenty of cricket to come. The pitches are good and with the boundary rope being brought in this season, it has put a lot of pressure on the spinners.
This suits us, as we are not strong in this department as far as spin bowling is concerned, when conditions become especially difficult in the middle period of the innings, where batting and bowling under Indian conditions can be tough.
The cricket season in India is just about getting under way, and, after the monsoon rains the pitches become dry and dusty.
Unlike last season’s ICL series, all the teams are playing in each of our four venues, a week at a time.
It is a rather busy roadshow, with nine teams participating at one venue. It is great to see more corporate involvement and sponsorship of the ICL this season. All the grounds are up to international standard now in terms of making it a conducive environment for players, media and spectators. My travels take me to Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Travel around India these days is fairly pleasant work and the pace of change and development, becomes more and more apparent every time I return to these parts.
Hyderabad has been particularly pleasant with a world-class golf resort available to us, where we can play as much golf and relax as we want to.
It is a hugely extravagant golfing venture and with many more to come, India will become a major golfing destination in time to come.
Further Tigers’ team news is that I have been very impressed with another former teammate, Lance Klusener. Remember him?
After a very successful county season with Northamptonshire where he topped the national batting averages, he is as fit as a fiddle and playing as well as I have ever seen him play.
He ran a brilliant bleep test, which is an athletics test done over 20 metres of continuous shuttles between two markers with the time between each shuttle becoming shorter.
It is murderous and designed to bring you to your knees. At the age of 37 he got to a brilliant level 13.
I am looking to him to produce some vintage Klusener stuff and to further convince me that South Africa could do with him to plug a hole or two in their limited-overs’ squads.
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