IPL week one recap: Pant returns, Gaikwad shines, MI flounder

A week into IPL 2024, here’s a look at some of the major talking points of the competition so far.

New CSK captain Ruturaj hits the right notes

When a day before the start of the tournament it was announced that MS Dhoni would not be leading Chennai Super Kings this season, a legion of fans let out a collective display of shock. Dhoni had captained CSK for every IPL season except two – when the franchise was suspended – and had lifted the trophy twice since 2021 to become joint most successful captain alongside Rohit Sharma with five titles.
How CSK would fare, despite Dhoni being on the field as wicketkeeper, under new captain Ruturaj Gaikwad, suddenly became a hot topic. As it panned out, CSK under Gaikwad defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore rather easily in the tournament opener and then smashed Gujarat Titans by 63 runs.

Gaikwad may not have clicked as an opener yet, but his field settings and bowling changes have been smart. No doubt Dhoni’s shadow loom large on the field, and surely Gaikwad can and will go to the former CSK skipper for whatever he needs, but there has been enough in these two matches to garner how the franchise is intent on shaping its future around the current captain.
Rishabh Pant returns to cricket

Less than 15 months from that fateful night in December 2022 when he suffered an accident behind the wheel on a highway from Delhi to Roorkee, Rishabh Pant was back on the cricket field leading Delhi Capitals. The 26-year-old has undergone plastic surgery after being left with facial injuries following the collision, which in his own words left him wondering if he would ever walk, forget playing cricket. Having recently been passed fit to keep wickets in the IPL, Pant stepped onto the cricket field and showed glimpses of his old self.

He only made 18 runs, but during that innings Pant did not look in any discomfort. More tellingly, he was agile while keeping wickets which augurs well for DC and Indian cricket. While his franchise lost their IPL 2024 over, Pant looked as well as can be expected for a cricketer whose life had been thrown out of whack.

IPL’s richest duo face tough initiation

In the clash of the IPL’s two biggest earners, Pat Cummins and Sunrisers Hyderabad ended up wondering how a match they seemed set to lose ended up slipping from their grasp in the final five deliveries of the contest, while despite being on the winning side of a humdinger at Eden Gardens, the league’s all-time most expensive purchase Mitchell Starc was left to nurse figures of 0/56 from four overs.
That included being hit for 26 runs in a single over, after his KKR captain Shreyas Iyer handed him the ball for the 19th over of the SRH innings which saw Heinrich Klaasen smoke Starc for three sixes and Shahbaz Ahmed a fourth. But Starc can at least take some solace from being on the right end of a narrow result, as Klaasen and Shahbaz were dismissed in a pulsating final over to give KKR victory by four runs. Cummins, his Australian captain, found himself walking out to face the final delivery of the match and failed to connect, thus sending the Eden Gardens fans into a tizzy.

This match was the closest we’ve seen so far in IPL 2024, for at one stage Cummins’ team seemed down for the count with an asking rate touching 19 runs per over. Thanks to Klaasen’s brilliant 63 off 29 balls SRH turned the match around to set themselves a very attainable 13 off the final over, bowled by Harshit Rana. When Klaasen hit his eighth six off the first ball, it seemed like KKR were out of the contest completely, but the bowler kept his nerve to bowl a nerveless next five deliveries.

Pandya booed in Ahmedabad, MI lose twice

The narrative of Hardik Pandya leaving Gujarat Titans after just two seasons – in which they won the IPL in 2022 and ended up losing finalists in 2023 – and moving back to Mumbai had been worked up to another level even before match five of the tournament. Back in Ahmedabad, where he twice led GT in IPL finals, Pandya was booed by Gujarati fans and had had a tough time on the field.
Pandya’s decision to start the bowling himself, despite having a bowler of Jasprit Bumrah’s caliber, and then some constant shuffling of the bowlers, followed by him sending Rohit to the boundary, left many watchers puzzled. Then in a chase of 169, Pandya demoting himself to No 7 and subsequently failing to finish the match, added to the frustration of MI fans.
While Mumbai’s collapse when they needed 48 runs off 36 deliveries with seven wickets in hand cannot be attributed to Pandya, his decisions during the loss to GT indicate that the road ahead for the skipper and franchise may not be as smooth as many envisioned it to be.

If anyone doubted this, then what happened in Hyderabad was further evidence of something being off. Pandya won the toss and opted to bowl on the flattest surface of IPL 2024, and SRH posted the highest total in tournament history – 277/3 in 20 overs. Barring Bumrah, who conceded just 36 runs from four overs, all the MI bowlers took a bruising. Once again, Pandya did not use Bumrah as he could have in the Powerplay – perhaps because he was saving him for the dangerous Klaasen – but overall, the new MI captain’s body language and bowling changes were flat.