Overshadowed again

Statistics never tell the whole story, but these are quite interesting. The top five knocks in the Indian Premier League: Brendon McCullum’s brutal 158 against Bangalore on the opening night, Sanath Jayasuriya’s back-breaking, spotlight-stealing 114 not out against Chennai, Adam Gilchrist’s blistering 109 off 53 balls against Mumbai, Andrew Symonds’s testosterone-driven 117 not out against Rajasthan and Mike Hussey’s awe-inspiring 116 not out against Mohali.

Most sixes: David Hussey (17), Gilchrist (16), McCullum and Jayasuriya (15), Shane Watson and Virender Sehwag (14).

Most boundaries, highest strike-rates, highest averages — it’s quite easy to rattle of ‘top-five’ stats without finding a mention of Gambhir in there. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the mountain of runs he’s piling up in the IPL though.

Today, he rattled off his fifth fifty in 10 games, helping Delhi put up an imposing 194-4 against the travel-weary Chargers.

With 425 sly ones, he’s the tournament’s leading run-getter by some distance (it still feels weird to call him the ‘holder of the Orange Cap’). Unfortunately, he’s still unable to shrug off the habit of getting overshadowed.

For how long can you hold a grudge against a front-foot that goes too far across? How many runs will it take to wipe off the irritation caused by a bat-swing that starts at second slip and ends up anywhere between point and mid-wicket?

By the time he was stumped after some smart bit of bowling by Pragyan Ojha, he had snicked, sliced and thumped his way to 79 — another innings that will get forgotten after Mishra’s last-over heroics, but they’re all adding up to make it a pretty memorable tournament for Gambhir.

... contd.