Class is PERMANENT

Indian Premier League...Its back. The new born baby of 2008 is now into its 3rd year. It's growing and swelling as well. Swelling in term of the amount of revenue involved in it. It has been proved again, that in India - Cricket, Film Industry and Politics will never let you down (in terms of Paisa), if you are capable of showing your talent. Mr. Modi is showing his. Let’s forget this all, no need to get into an argument which has no solution from us. Let’s get back to IPL 3 - 2010.

On its eve in 2008, it was said that Twenty20 is a game of young legs, aggressive batsman ship, cross batted slogs, big and hard hitting and blah blah blah…. And when some of the veteran players, technical batsmen and old legs were selected and bought by the different teams, many eyebrows were raised. Among the lot few of them were retired, a few were into their last days of international arena and some were still going strong with their solid conventional cricket. In its early days of IPL, the fact that it’s the young blood game was getting a nod from everyone and people agreed what they were witnessing. But now after couple of years, not everyone but at least those who understand the depth of cricket, will definitely agree. It's not only power and aggression that survives in this form. If you have the class you can make every format your own. And now the game has became sensible cricket, where bowlers have learned the art of bowling in the shortest format. If you go back into the history, the cricket was never a bowlers game, whether Test or One Dayer’s.

And now the miniature version was no exception either. But the Class Bowlers have learned the way to tackle this and if you take the names of the people who are doing it, you will get your answer. Kumble, Murali, Vaas, Warnie are doing it Right. And they are already in the late 30's. Talk of the batsman...it's again the old wine. Sachin, Hayden, Gilli, Kallis are doing it in style. And all the above names are class act. Sachin has hit just one 6 this year, still holds a stammering strike rate of 150. He is just playing those shots from the books of Cricket by applying some sensible approach. Kallis was not even selected in the 2007 South African twenty 20 Squad for WC. He took it as a pride issue, and next 2 years IPL saw an Old Oak standing still driving their team home, almost in each and every game. Kumble was never praised for his leading qualities in Tests, but see this man has transformed a below par performance of his team into a probable for the Cup last year. And he is doing it again this year. Gilli and Warnie did it in the first 2 seasons and this year, Kumble or Sachin might do it for their teams. RCB was a fun making act in 2008. A test team for 20/20. And now you see they are testing others.

It doesn’t mean that the young guys are not into the act, they are. And this competition is proving to be a solid platform for the youngsters to show their capabilities. And when you are playing with the Class Names mentioned above, you are going to learn a lot, which will take you to new heights. Again the years to come will show how this new format is going to take the Cricket ahead. And how the classy players will perform with their own quality. We all know the old saying in Cricket…Form is Temporary, Class is Permanent and which ever format it may be.