Last week in IPL did not see much change in the position of the teams with Chennai, Delhi and Jaipur carrying on the tempo from the first week. But surely this will change now that several of the Australian stars have departed to play for their national teams.

Team Standings : With Daredevils of Delhi stopping Chennai Juggernaut, team standings saw slight change. Now, Delhi is topping the  tables, with Chennai and Jaipur closely following it, with all three winning 4 matches of the five played. In the fourth place is Preity Zinta’s Mohali team with 4 wins out of 6 matches. Kolkota which began like a whirlwind is now at the 4 place with only 2 wins followed by Bangalore with the same number of victories. Hyderabad and Mumbai are the bottom two with a win apiece.

Team Strategies: Delhi, Chennai and Jaipur are continuing their winning streak, leaving others gasping for new strategies. Some of the close fought contests were won by the teams which held their nerve till the end like the Bangalore v/s Chennai match where Bangalore almost won the match, requiring 8 runs an over with 7 wickets in Hand. But last 5 overs changed everything and Dhoni showed why he is the most valuable player in the IPL.

Though late, Bangalore finally brought in Misbah-ul-Haq for the match against Hyderabad yesterday. Bangalore also won the tight match against them by only 3 runs though the player change did not bring much change in the scores. But Misbah is a class player as proved in world T20 and will be a asset to Bangalore. Hyderabad will be losing their star all rounder Andrew Symonds which may have impact on their winning prospects. Also, the loss of  Hayden and Hussey for the Chennai team will hurt them, as was evident from their match against Delhi. Teams with prominent Australian players need to change their strategies to make up for their loss. On the positive side, this also gives opportunities for some teams like Bangalore, Mumbai to come up on top since they have mostly South African counterparts.

Controversies: Controversies dominated IPL last week. With Harbhajan being handed over 11 match ban, everyone thought that the matter was over and IPL had sent a strong message. But it was not to be - On field Umpire Amish Saheba giving an interview to a Mumbai tabloid saying that Bhajji was provoked by Sree during the match created flutters. Though initially he denied giving the interview, audio tape evidence proved otherwise. He has been suspended for 2 matches now. Another spat between players came up with Shane Warne and Sourav Ganguly loggering heads over a umpire’s decision. Both were warned and fined 10 percent of their match fees. Seems like controversies do cook up in evenly fashion and served on a daily basis with interest deviating from game to off field matters!

Next Week in Prospect: With Australia and New Zealand players departing for international tours, there is a chance for the teams at the bottom of the table to revamp their strategies against a much low profile opponents now and score some points. I would like to see this happen to Mumbai, Bangalore and Mohali. At least we would like to see some more close matches, highs and downs in the teams’ time line in IPL. Otherwise we are just seeing different Australias in the top 3-4 teams just like the ones we use to witness in international cricket.