Today we witnessed one of Team India’s biggest victories over Australia in cricket. While winning in such a emphatic manner is a very good sign and it shows everyone why we are the world champions, I was wondering how is a team like Australia who is without most of their star players able to score 359 runs against our bowlers. Obviously, our bowling attack needs to improve drastically to have any impact on conditions which are tailor made for batting. But there is another reason why the team like Australia is able to score so many runs. It is because of the IPL. When I went through their team list, most of their top order batsmen, with exception of George Bailey, have been playing in the IPL for last 2 editions, which is basically 4 months of exposure of playing in the Indian conditions. Earlier, the teams used to take quite some time to get used to the Indian conditions, the full stadiums, the noise etc. and by the time they would get used to conditions, the series would have been over. But now with the IPL, all those shock factors are gone. Now since most countries are allowing their players to participate in the IPL, they are adapting to Indian conditions pretty well and it is showing in the way they are handling our spinners and fast bowlers.
Obviously on the other hand, the quality of Indian team’s batting has also improved drastically. No longer is any target not chase able and most teams know that no target is safe when the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni get going. Somehow I feel that IPL has helped create an aura around the Indian one day team – that this team is unbeatable and any team would have to play out of their skins to beat us.
My thoughts...My story 