The IPL awards

The IPL Awards
Article By: Dan NichollTue, 26 May 2009 11:00

Unbranded, unofficial, and completely subjective, Dan Nicholl presents iafrica.com’s Indian Premier League awards for 2009…

Shahrouk Khan Award for Most Screen Time: Shahrouk himself, crowd wave carefully copied from Queen Elizabeth, got plenty of attention, even as his ramshackle team sank further into the tournament. But Bollywood stars, cheerleaders, even the cricketers, didn’t come close to matching Lalit Modi for sheer screen hours. Did the man have a designated camera crew to follow him round for the entire tournament? It certainly seemed that way.

Juan Sebastien Veron Biggest Flop Award: English players missed out on IPL season one; the pretty much season two as well. Arriving on a wave of seven-figure hype, Kevin Pietersen did almost nothing, and Andrew Flintoff even less. Bangalore did surge into form once skipper Pietersen had departed; read into that what you will.

Manly Old Age Home Players of the Tournament: Ask the Australian selectors off the record for the first three names on their team sheet for the Twenty20 World Cup, and Warne, Hayden and Gilchrist would be the automatic picks. If they’ve retired, then no one appears to have told them, all three players blazing through the tournament and producing match-winning performances. Throw in Anil Kumble and Ashish Nehra (and glimpses from Gibbs, Tendulkar and Jayasuriya), and you have to wonder where Brian Lara is.

Criminally Underused Award: There is, quite simply, no better death bowler on the planet than Charl Langeveldt, as he’s proved time and again. But he’s getting used to cold shoulders, first at home, and no with his haphazard Knight Riders team. Finally picked by a hopeless unit for the last match, he took three for 15 in four overs and looked world class. Expect him to be on the bench again next season, then.

DLF Citi Kingfisher Commentator’s Award: It was good hearing Ali Campbell back on the microphone, Marc Pozzo’s Zimbabwean prodigy upping this year’s GDP in Zim by 28% with his commentary fee. But as a sponsor’s dream, no one could touch the manic Danny Morrison, who spent a frantic month throwing himself down rubber chutes, stating the blindingly obvious, and using sponsor names as verbal punctuation marks. All of which guarantees him the head role for season three, particularly as he’s rumoured to have changed his middle names to Leroy Ferdinand — which will give us DLF Morrison in 2010.

Sun City Best Supporting Role: I’ll take full credit here for the Deccan Chargers victory. Thanks to Brett Hoppe and his team at Sun International, Golf Punk took the Chargers up to Sun City, and my all-star team (myself, Don Gammon, Roland Schoeman and Callum Scott) took on Herschelle, Scotty Styris, Darren Lehmann and Ryan Harris. The feature’s in the new issue of Golf Punk, which will be on shelves in a couple of days; Punk won the challenge at Gary Player Country Club, but the experience of fevered competition over 18 holes clearly held the cricketers in good stead come the play-offs. Feel free to bring us over to India next year, lads.

Naomi Campbell Petulance Trophy: Michael Atherton could look as grumpy as any sportsman, Geoffrey Boycott has a famous temper, and anyone who ran out Grant Flower needed to sleep with one eye open for the next month. But Sourav Ganguly is in a class of his own: stripped of the captaincy, clearly unhappy with his team, and batting with neither care nor form, he was Kolkata’s strutting peacock in a team that really could have used him making an effort. Entertaining sidebar for us, but little benefit to the Knight Riders.

Magnus Walter I Think I’m Indian Award: Named in honour of my cousin’s husband, a six foot five German who’s convinced he’s Indian, no South African quite took to the IPL like Francois Pienaar. With more than a touch of Bollywood to his new crisp advert with Graeme Smith and JP Duminy, Francois was at games, at functions, and even judged the Miss Bollywood final on Saturday night, by which time he was refusing to answer people unless addressed as Rahul. I’m playing golf with Frankie later this week; I’ll let you know if there’s a touch of Mumbai to the accent.

Brian Lara Innings of the Tournament: Manish Pandey’s hundred was a landmark knock (the first Indian hundred), Ross Taylor had some monumental assaults, and Brendan McCallum finally got into the act right at the end. But nothing quite matched Adam Gilchrist in the semifinal for a blend of raw savagery and classical shots, summed up in that brutal introductory over from Dirk Nannes, who’d verged on unplayable until then.

Manchester United 8 Barcelona 0 Team of the Tournament: There’s a fair argument for suggesting that Chennai and Delhi were the competition’s best teams, and that the rub of the semifinal green saw them out a match too early. And Delhi in particular looked unbeatable, De Villiers’ hundred and Nannes’s thunderbolts leading a stellar team. But ultimately the Chargers did what they needed to make the last four, produced a great team effort in the semifinal, and then kept their cool in the final against a team that had also bounced back extraordinarily. Last year’s bottom two contesting the final in front of a packed foreign house was a final testament to the IPL’s success; here’s to rumours of an imminent return to South Africa having plenty of substance.

taipan wrote:
Manchester United 8 Barcelona 0 Team of the Tournament

You farking wish!
Best day of the year so far, we get to see United fans weeping into their beer at about 9.35pm tonight.

Has it finished? I thought it had only just started .

Careful vilks.
jimmi rich might just accuse you of being insensitive towards the Indian culture!

Did Sooky Smith do a diary of the IPL?

That's what I was looking for when I found this.

What award can be given to Glenn McGrath? A bowler of his calibre and greatness and among the best in the last year's edition, didn't get a single game?

I feel dirty even posting in this thread.

Zat wrote:Did Sooky Smith do a diary of the IPL?

Nope, unfortunately not.

Shame.

Awards?? You mean they actually have AWARDS for that crap?

You've fallen victim to a touch of NSR, I suspect, BD.

Cut him some slack. He's been out of the SR loop for some time. He will have to began his reflexes.

Actually there were official awards as well

Bullsh!t.

skully wrote:Cut him some slack. He's been out of the SR loop for some time. He will have to began his reflexes.

Is this some use of the word began I've not seen before?

Shane Warne should win the Captaincy award. He was the equivalent of two captains.


By size and ego.

Shane Warne, truly The Great Man