What’s common among Kevin Pietersen, Adam Gilchrist, Jesse Ryder, Brendon McCullum, Sourav Ganguly and Sanath Jayasuriya? In the Indian Premier League’s second season, which has seen hundreds of sixes and over a thousand fours so far, all of them have got a golden duck. There have been 31 first-ball dismissals in the tournament, indicating that bowlers have been on the mark right from the word go. In all, IPL2 has seen 77 ducks so far with the openers accounting for 10 of them — Parthiv Patel and Herschelle Gibbs alone have 3 apiece against their names.

Gilchrist, who was trapped first ball by Albie Morkel when Deccan Chargers played Chennai, says, “You will have to give the bowlers some credit in a game dominated by the batsmen. There is swing early on in the innings and it pays to get it on target straightaway. Albie bowled a good first ball full and deserved the wicket.”

Among the teams, Bangalore Royal Challengers batsmen seemed to have shown less patience, scoring the maximum ducks — 15. Delhi Daredevils, on the other hand, have been more cautious and have the least — seven.

Former leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishan blames it on the nature of Twenty20 cricket, with the batsmen under pressure to hit every ball. “In Twenty20, there’s no scope for a batsman to take time and he is always in a hurry to hit irrespective of the ball’s merit. So the margin of error is huge and that’s only one of the reasons why we have seen so many ducks in the tournament.”

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