Cash-rich IPL sides are struggling to compete with the so-called minnows of the Champions League

The Champions League needed a Super Over as much as an old roué needs Viagra. For almost a week, games not involving the Indian Premier League sides had been played out in front of largely empty stands, curtain-raisers to the main event. It didn’t help that the marquee names – the Royal Challengers, the Delhi Daredevils and the Deccan Chargers – all belly-flopped badly at the first time of asking, beaten by teams operating on a fraction of their budgets.

Like the boy Pepe in the Asterix comics who goes red in the face, the franchise owners sat short of breath in their ivory-tower boxes, contemplating the vast investments that had led to such humiliation. For the neutral who abhors the Real Madrid-Manchester City model and what it has done to sport, those were moments to savour, with the Cape Cobras and Somerset the equivalent of an AEK Athens or Standard Liège.

Tuesday was different. A double-header in Delhi, with not one Indian side in action. Few turned up, but those that did conform to the jaded stereotype about Indians loving the game wouldn’t have gone home disapppointed. First, the Wayamba Elevens, with Kumar Sangakkara trying hard not to be partial in the commentary box, successfully defended 118 against a Victorian Bushrangers side that had routed Delhi. They missed out on the next stage because of net run-rate, but until Andrew McDonald came along and slugged a few down the ground, Victoria had looked alarmingly vulnerable, caught between the quest for victory and the pursuit of 83 that would guarantee a place in the next phase.

With the entire square having been relaid in the summer, this was another slow and low pitch. On such surfaces, no batsman is ever in, no run chase a formality. That was illustrated beautifully in the second game, as the Diamond Eagles went from 70 for 0 at halfway to 115 for 4 with just one ball remaining. The South Africa-asphyxiation headlines were already composed when Ryan McLaren – an exception because of time spent with Kent? – coolly picked up a Yasir Read more…

Administrator Champions League T20 Andrew McDonald, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cape Cobras, Champions League, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Deccan Chargers, Delhi Daredevils, Dwayne Smith, IPL, Luke Wright, Royal Challengers, Ryan McLaren, Somerset, Super Over, Sussex, Victoria, Victorian Bushrangers, Wayamba Elevens, Yasir Arafat