IPL 2016: 5 questions that remained unanswered from IPL 9
A brainchild of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the Indian Premier League has been one of the most exhilarating success stories in the history of world cricket. Since its inception back in 2008, the domestic Indian T20 league has been filled with some of the biggest cricketing names on the planet. Besides an abundance of glitz and grandeur has successfully been able to capture a month long attention of the 1.2 billion cricket aficionados in this part of the world for the past nine years.
This year’s IPL was indeed a special one since it marked the emergence of two new franchises- Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune Supergiants in place of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals. Although the Supergiants led by India’s most successful limited overs captain, MS Dhoni couldn’t quite make an impression in the tournament, the Rajkot-based franchise did pretty well to book a play-off berth.
Moreover, the incredible success story of the David Warner-led Sunrisers Hyderabad side, an exceptional fight back at the business end of the tournament by Royal Challengers Bangalore courtesy of the tremendous batting prowess of Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, the unfortunate slip-up of the defending champions, Mumbai Indians along with many other incidents had made the ninth edition of the coveted T20 tournament truly a nail biting one.
Having said that, the 2016 edition of the Indian Premier League had witnessed some occurrences which surely asked a number of questions which are yet to be answered. Here are a few of them:
#1 Why did MS Dhoni under use Ravichandran Ashwin?
Be it any international series, ICC event or the Indian Premier League, Ravichandran Ashwin had been his skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s go-to man since the past eight years or so. The Ashwin-Dhoni duo had formed a deadly combination in the franchise-based domestic Indian T20 tournament since their Chennai Super Kings days which dates back to 2009.
In what has been a tremendous IPL career, Ravichandran Ashwin had picked up 120 wickets for the ‘Men in Yellow’ in the 121 matches that he had played for them. He didn’t only exhibit an impressive average of 23.70 but his economy rate at the Chidambaram Stadium was also just as phenomenal. Giving away only 6.66 runs per over, Ravichandran Ashwin was undoubtedly one of the most feared spinners in the previous editions of the Indian Premier League.
Having said that, the Tamil Nadu cricketer’s recent string of international performances wasn’t as much effective as before. However, his contribution for the ‘Men in Blue’ in the Asia Cup and the ICC World T20- both of which took place earlier this year in the Indian subcontinent- cannot be easily ignored even by his critics.
Dhoni, on the other hand, might have viewed them differently. This year of the IPL was completely a different story for Ashwin who had been consistently underused by his captain for the Pune-based franchise. Although Ashwin did end up picking 10 wickets in the 14 IPL matches this year for the Rising Pune Supergiants, four of them came in a single fixture against KXIP. Moreover, the RPS captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni had bowled him a total of 44 overs in this year’s IPL out of the allotted 56.