Bad boys come good

CricBuzz - The Indian Premier League 2010 seemed to be following an eerily familiar script - that of IPL 2008. Consider the similarity in results - Kolkata Knight Riders had won their first two matches, with their first two opponents being the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Deccan Chargers. Rajasthan had lost their first match (albeit they were thrashed in 2008 and lost narrowly in 2010), Delhi had won their first match, and Kolkata's next match after winning the first two was against Chennai.

If the script had continued, the Deccan Chargers would have continued to lose, and ended up fighting for the wooden spoon with Bangalore. However, before the script could be allowed to play out circa 2008, the Deccan Chargers reversed it spectacularly.

The man who gave them the impetus today was captain and talisman Adam Gilchrist. Having not middled much in the previous match but still racing to 54 off 35 balls, Gilchrist looked set to go one better as he showed just how destructive he could be when he was actually middling balls. However, what could have been the Gilchrist-led revival story was cut short and a whirlwind 38 off 17 balls was over. Another wicket, and Deccan looked like they would throw away a good start once again.

That is when former bad boy Herschelle Gibbs and current pariah Andrew Symonds got together for what turned out to be the game-defining partnership.

Gibbs is several steps ahead of Symonds in the bad boy cycle, and he has been fortunate and sensible enough to pull himself out of it in time and revive his international cricket career. He had dalliances that could be considered worse than Symonds - after all nothing is worse than a match-fixing slur - and he had trouble with alcohol too. However, the Gibbs of today is more of a fun elder statesman in teams he is part of than the man who captains and coaches take young wards aside and point out saying "If you value your career, do not hang around too much with him."

Andrew Symonds is not so clear-cut a case. He is still out of international cricket, and does not look like coming back to it anytime too soon. He has committed repeated transgressions and not had the sagacity - a la Gibbs - to arrest the downward spiral and get his career back on track. However, he clearly loves being on a cricket field. He is a devastating batsman, a handy bowler and an electric fielder, and given those gifts, it is only natural that he misses the action on the field and yearns to return to the big stage. Before the IPL started, Symonds knew that this was his one chance to show the world and the Australian selectors that he still had it in him to perform on a world-stage and do it while not making an exhibition of himself.

While he not many would have doubted that he would perform well, a lot of people would have wondered whether he could behave himself. So far at least, he has. And in this match he made up for his non-performance in the previous one.

Symonds was helped by the fact that he had Gibbs at the other end, since he was struggling to put bat to ball in the initial part of his innings. Gibbs was also not striking the ball particularly well, but he didn't look all at sea.

They both had been given a fantastic cushion by Gilchrist who had crashed and banged the score to 55 in less than 5 overs, and that allowed them to take their time to settle.

The first four overs of the partnership yielded just 14 runs, and Deccan fans would have been wondering whether yet another good start was going to be squandered. However, after the initial struggle, the pair blossomed. The transformation was particularly distinct in Symonds. Having scratched around to make 3 runs off the first 17 balls he faced, he broke free and batted like the Symonds for whom the Chargers had paid USD 1.35 million. Off the next 26 balls he faced, he smote 47 runs. Gibbs was not so dramatic, but he too upped the ante as the partnership progressed. He was on a sedate 12 off 15 balls, and then scored 33 off his next 21 balls. Both of them had accelerated at almost the same time, with the result that the Deccan Chargers were deluged with runs.

The partnership was eventually worth 95 runs and had come off 12.3 overs - a run rate of 7.60, but mirroring almost exactly its protagonists, the partnership too had a slow start before exploding. The first 25 balls brought 14 runs, the next 50 balls brought 81 runs.

With Kemar Roach and Dwyane Smith expected to join the squad soon, a failure here for Gibbs and Symonds would likely have seen at least one of them benched, but by exploding into form at the right time, they both have given the Deccan selectors a pleasant dilemma of whom to leave out.