The 15th season of the world-renowned Indian Premier League (IPL) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India has come to an end and the IPL has finally got a no-champion in this two-month long tournament. If one looks at the entire tournament, one can see that some of the new star players have emerged. So some of the frozen star players have failed to perform according to their reputation or it can be said that their surasuria has spoken.
The result in almost half of the IPL matches has been decided in the last over and this has always been the case in the IPL, so no one was surprised. In every match for Gujarat Titans, a new player came forward as the match winner and that is what has made him the champion. Sometimes Rashid Khan, known for his bowling, won the match against Gujarat by batting, sometimes Hardik won the match with his bowling and because of that, the Gujarat Titans continued to dominate the IPL this season. However, no such surprise element was seen during the entire tournament and the loss was huge this season.
The Gujarat Titans team played like a champion from the beginning
The Gujarat Titans have been strong since the start of the 15th season of the IPL. The Gujarat Titans, captained by Hardik Patel, have dominated the tournament from the outset. The Gujarat team topped the points table by winning their first five league stage matches and dropped to second place in one match but overall there was no major change in the points table till the end and Gujarat Titans remained at the top of the points table till the end. The Lucknow Super Giants looked a bit challenging in the middle stage of the league stage, but slipped to third place in the final round. Many of the Gujarat Titans’ matches were so one-sided that after the first 20 overs, no one doubted the outcome.
The points table has seen some major upheaval this year
If you look at the 15th season of the IPL, it is clear that there has been no major upheaval in the points table this year. While the Gujarat Titans maintained their lead, the Lucknow Super Giants and Rajasthan Royals have also been consistently in the top four in the points table since the beginning of the tournament. The three teams have not been in a position to reach the playoffs since the halfway point of the league stage. There was some competition between RCB and Delhi Capitals and Mumbai made RCB’s job easier. Nothing like the upset and chaos that was seen in the points table every season. Neither Chennai Super Kings nor Mumbai Indians have been able to reach the bottom after half a season like the previous season. At first it seemed that the losing teams would go on to win but then this did not happen and those who won the matches at the beginning kept on winning till the end and hence CSK or Mumbai did not get a chance to make a fuss like before.
More than one-time champions Mumbai, CSK and KKR are already out
Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders, who have won the title more than once in the history of IPL, performed poorly. This time the three teams were far behind in the league stage. The five-time champions Mumbai Indians started preparations for the next season only after half the matches of the league stage. The same was true with Chennai. The Kolkata team was in the playoff race for a while, but it was just a formality for them compared to the last week of the league stage. The trio’s poor performances affected the tournament, with all three teams being adept at knowing how to win a match, but not their yardstick this year.
No secret superstar has emerged this IPL season
No secret superstar has emerged this season in the IPL. Umran Malik certainly impressed everyone with his bowling speed and he also managed to get a place in Team India, but the discussion started at the end of last season. If you look at the past, in the first season of IPL played in 2008, Ravindra Jadeja played 14 out of 16 matches for his team Rajasthan Royals. He bowled just 2.1 overs throughout the season and also batted against Kolkata, scoring 33 off 19 balls, but seeing his fielding throughout the tournament, the demand for him to be included in the Indian team began. Similarly, in 2009, Manish Pandey became the first Indian batsman to score a century and became a star. Last year too, Hershal Patel wreaked havoc with his slow and cutter ball which gave him a direct entry into Team India. No such player has been seen this year. RCB’s Rajat Patidar claimed, but did not get enough opportunities. So some of those bowlers also shone but they were not so impressive.
For the first time in the IPL, the final was so dull and one-sided
The current IPL saw the most dull match of the entire season in the final. Rajasthan Royals, who reached the final by winning the second eliminator, looked set to challenge Gujarat in the final. But the Rajasthan Royals team was under pressure from the start. The team disbanded after a good start to the powerplay during batting. Jose Butler struggled for a while, but after his dismissal, none of the team’s batsmen showed fighting prowess. After that, when it came to bowling while batting for Gujarat Titans, a similar situation was seen. It looked as if Rajasthan had conceded defeat after scoring 130 runs. If the team had shown even a little bit of fighting, there would have been a little bit of thrill in the final and it could have happened that the result could have been something else. If you want to give an example, you can give the final of 2017 in which Mumbai Indians managed to win the title by defending it despite scoring the same amount in the final.
