Eric Simons, IPL 2020

Window cleaners and adapting to conditions

This may yet prove to be the closest IPL ever. I’m not a historian on the tournament but I’m fairly sure it’s unprecedented not to have a single unbeaten team after three rounds of matches – and there’s only two points between first place and last place.

There are a few reasons for the tight competitions, the first is that with the IPL system of a big auction every three years and small top-up auctions in between, by the time a cycle is at its end, which we are now as this is the third year of the cycle, teams have found ways to shape their squads and fill any gaps the initial auction may have created.

The second significant reason is the lack of home-ground advantage. Apart from the familiarity of the playing conditions, having between 40,000 and 50,000 supporters cheering your every move obviously makes a difference to performance. This year the only cheers you hear are from the dug out or from speakers masquerading as a crowd.

When the Franchises build their squads they do so with their home conditions as the primary focus. We play seven out of 14 matches at home and you can control those conditions, they are predictable, so you buy players at the IPL auction to maximise your advantage.

Naturally that means certain teams will be better suited than others to the neutral venues of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, more by luck than design. The Super Kings are very much suited to the conditions which prevail in Chennai but finding a way has to be our challenge rather than a handicap.

Monu Kumar and Josh Hazlewood. Fast bowlers come in different shapes and sizes – both use bounce…just differently!

I said in the diaries before a match was even played that the teams which adapted best would be the successful ones. Most of the best players in the world are here with some of the best coaches so it’s no surprise that teams adapt quickly. Those which have played a second or even a third game at the same venue have improved noticeably. We have played all three of our games at different venues so, hopefully, we’ll now start to become familiar with them all and know what to expect.

The difference between cricket pitches and tennis courts is obvious but the principle of different condition is very similar. Some batsmen, and bowlers, will be more successful on quicker wickets, some on slower or lower bouncing surfaces. Rafa Nadal is a great player on all surfaces but he’s virtually unbeatable on clay. So is Roger Federer a great tennis player on all surfaces, but I suspect he’d pick grass if given the choice.

If you haven’t seen the boundary ‘save’ by Nicholas Pooran in the Royals record run chase, I suggest you google it and have a look. All fielders spend more and more time these days practising their work on the boundary edge but this save was on another level. Utterly amazing.

Life in the bubble remains interesting. They really are pulling out all the stops to ensure we do not have unnecessary contact with the outside world. We are not even allowed to visit the hotel reception and something as simple as replacing a room key card has to be done through designated team of attendants. This team of attendants are the same used all the time and the only ones providing us with hotel services. Whether it is on our hotel floor, the designated breakfast room or even the meals on match day at the ground, one team of attendants perform all these duties.

If we need something from the shops, we have to order it online and it is delivered to reception where it is sanitised and brought to our room by one of the attendants. There is an open-air balcony on the 24th floor of the hotel where we had a braai (or BBQ as some of the squad called it) over the weekend. I discovered that Dubai has a ‘Butcher’s Grill’ restaurant and persuaded them to deliver some real South African boerwors. It was delivered downstairs, sanitised, and brought up to the 24th floor. A little ‘home comfort’.

The bubble and the situation has its downside but still, nobody is complaining about our predicament, quite the opposite. We are extremely fortunate and privileged to be doing what we love although it suddenly all seemed a little mundane and boring when these two gentlemen suddenly appeared outside, 30 storeys up, to clean the windows. The bubble suddenly seemed a good place to be.