IPL Live

Throughout today's first Indian Premier League fixture between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Kolkata Knight Riders, I'll be blogging live. Let me know what you think by clicking "comments" below

CLOSE: So that's that, then. Something of an anticlimax to kick off this groundbreaking tournament, but I'd far rather that such a one-sided match was completed early than it drifted onwards with one side just too far behind the rate for the full 20 overs. Full marks to Brendon McCullum for becoming an instant star but his record innings killed the contest and in the end I found the ease with which he made his runs rather dull. As an occasional novelty, the IPL has a certain appeal but it is hard to see how six weeks of this will hold much attraction. The competition now needs some close matches to reignite the passions.

Right, that's it for me. I'm off to the Cooperage pub in Southwark, where they serve pints of Old Wallop in pewter tankards. Ah, the way things were. Do pop in if you are about. And as for Murder, She Wrote, I think it was Patrick Macnee who did it. Good night.

6.25pm: WICKET Some marvellous bowling figures from Kolkaka. Dinda has taken two for nine in three overs; Sharma one for seven off three. Praveen Kumar, on 18, is the only Bangalore batsman to reach double figures but he has run out of partners as Joshi holes out in the deep. How appropriate that the fielder underneath the catch was Brendon McCullum. Kolkata win by 140 runs, the fourth heaviest margin of victory in Twenty20 history.

6.16pm: Ricky Ponting doesn't want to hit the showers just yet. That can be the only reason why he just dropped what would have been the match-winning catch just now at mid-off. Sloppy and uncharacteristic error. And the required run-rate creeps up to four per ball. 77-9 off 14 overs.

6.15pm: WICKET Zaheer Khan slogs and misses at a ball from Ganguly, which clips his off stump. 70-9 now. Incidentally, Ganguly looks less balding than he has in a while. I wonder if Shane Warne, who said one of the reasons he was doing the IPL was to promote his hair-restoration company, has given him some free samples?

6.10pm: Praveen Kumar, who started this match, wallops a six down the ground, but it is only the second scored by his team. 70-8 off 13 overs now.

6.05pm: WICKET. Another one falls, this time to the first run out in the IPL. Noffke just fails to get home and he is gone for nine. Bangalore have avoided the heaviest defeat ever in T20, but only just. "Zaheer Khan can wield the bat well, so it is not all over" says the commentator, which for sheer optimism is up there with the man on the Titanic who said "I think we've got time for another game of deck quoits" as the ship went down. Zaheer needs more than three runs per ball to win it from here.

6pm: Fifty up with a rare four. Bravo, lads, bravo. Just sixty balls left in which to score another 172. If Bangalore don't score another run, then it will be the heaviest defeat in T20 cricket.

5.55pm: WICKET. A thin edge behind by White for six and that is now 43-7. "Going down like a house of cards," says the commentator. Except that houses of cards are by definition upright. What we have here is a team who are going down like a pile of cards. They almost have enough time left for a quick game of Five5, a beer match if you will.

5.50pm: WICKET. And that has probably ended any enthusiasm in Bangalore for this game. 38-6 and it's the Agarkar/Ponting axis that accounts for the departure of Akhil, a local lad. Oh dear, oh dear. At least this execution is being done swiftly and efficiently. It would be far worse if they were pootling along at six an over and not losing wickets.

5.45pm: On comes Captain Ganguly to bowl and his dibbly-dobbly medium-pacers could be quite useful here (although let's face it, I could bowl my non-turning spinners in this situation and would have enough runs in the bank to defend the target). One run off the first ball and then a good appeal turned down for LBW off the second. A great piece of fielding stops a probable four off the next. "That could prove the difference," says the commentator. Er, I think not. Especially as Bangalore's fifth wicket falls very soon after. Boucher skies to Murali Kartik at mid off, who holds the catch just above the ground. 38-5 off eight overs and I think that is good night for Bangalore.

5.40pm: Cameron White held the world record for a T20 innings, with 141 before Super Mac's charge today. He will have to make a very brisk hundred to give Bangalore a glimmer of a hope. Sadly Bangalore's ambitions at this stage are limited to streaky thick edges to third man for a couple. At last, though, Boucher whips a four through square leg, taking them to the dizzy heights of 33-4.

5.36pm: WICKET again. 24-4 this time and this is turning into something embarrassingly one-sided. Jaffer edges tamely to Ponting at slip off Dinda and he is back in the hutch for what is admittedly his highest ever score in Twenty20, a pathetic six. Kolkata almost run Boucher out later in the over as he goes for a risky single, but with almost 14 runs needed per over he has to do that. Just remember that when Dravid won the toss he chose to field saying that the decisions would help his side. Well, they are now 26-4 off six overs, just 35 runs behind what Kolkata were on.

5.32pm: "They won't be able to make the runs in singles, someone has to do something drastic out there," the commentator says. Well, durr. With the asking rate pushing 13.5 per over, Kallis hits out, smiting Bangalore's first six over long on but then, whoops, he chips an easy catch to mid on off Ajit Agarkar and Bangalore are suddenly 23-3 and that run-rate heads back towards 13.5 again. Cameron White comes out. Now he can hit it quite hard. Is he the last chance? Well, Mark Boucher is still to come and he has a record 50-over innings to his name, but Bangalore need more than just records. 24-3 off five.

5.30pm: Sharma gives up two runs off his first ball - if all the bowlers can do that with every ball we may have a game on. Sadly, the rest of the over goes for only a single and a leg-bye. Meanwhile, bad light and rain are stopping play all over the county championship. 16-2 off four overs.

5.25pm: WICKET The catcalls are coming from the crowd now as Bangalore lose a second wicket. Kohli drags the ball on to his stumps off Dinda and the home side are 9-2 with more than two runs per ball needed. The chase is over before it ever began unless Kallis can do something special now. To answer a couple of your comments: John Mc - I think the only one who is in credit in terms of value for money so far is McCullum, maybe if Sharma gets a couple he will also be doing OK but at the moment he has cost $900,000 per wicket; Pablo - I make it one advert break every two overs, possibly more frequent but I'm using the breaks to catch up on my typing. Bangalore advance to 12-2 off three overs

5.16pm: WICKET Ishant Sharma makes himself unpopular with the Bangalore cowd. He bowls a beautiful swinging ball that uproots Dravid's leg stump and the former India captain and local hero is gone for two off three balls. Virat Kohli comes out in his place. Now I saw Kohli captain India Under-19 over here (with Sharma in his side) two years ago and I rate him. He's a very confident young batsman. The battle with Sharma could give us a hint of India's future. First ball is a bouncer. Next ball, is four leg byes. 9-1 off two overs and already the asking rate is immense.

5.12pm: Bangalore open with Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer, who has played only one Twenty20 game before this, in which he made four runs. Ashok Dinda will open the bowling. No, I've never heard of him either. Bangalore open with a single and a wide and another single. Unsurprisingly, McCullum has not come out as wicketkeeper. He's no doubt knackered. Or trying to find somewhere to sell him a beer. Wriddiman Saha is the keeper in his absence. Sugar rush from the wine gums kicking in for me now. Bangalore 4-0 off one.

5.10pm: And here we go again already. I just wonder if in scoring so heavily McCullum may have actually killed this opening game? If he had made only 80, say, and his team had made 180 then would we have a thrilling chase in prospect? I fear that Bangalore, if they lose early wickets, will struggle to keep up with the rate and the game we drift. Anyway, here we go.

4.55pm: And that's that. McCullum gets a six - his eleventh - off the first ball of the final over, then gets his twelfth off the next. He has now made the highest score ever hit in the five-year history of Twenty20. A scampered two gives him is 150, off 70 balls. Will they give him long to celebrate it? I make it 27 seconds between getting to the landmark and receiving the next ball. A dot follows, then another scampered two. One ball to come, what will Super Mac do? You guessed it: a six. 158 off 73 balls, quite astounding, the biggest of big bangs and yet the very belligerence of it made it seem quite dull towards the end. Kolkata have reached 222-3 (just one wicket away from the ultimate Richie Benaud scoreline). I'm off for a wee and to find some wine gums during the break. See you in a bit.

4.50pm: Boof: McCullum wallops another six and then, two balls later, hits the ball into the second tier and picks up a couple of fours to boot. He is in that sort of mood. But is this too repetitive? When someone has it so easy, does it remain fun for long? It's a bit like Stick Cricket, the online game where you try and whack the ball out of the ground. You play it for a bit and then you realise that you've wasted two hours of your life. Two hours you could have spent reading one of the great novels, flirting with a beautiful woman or even doing some work. After a while, it all becomes too dull. 200-3 off 19

4.45pm: WICKET. Noffke gets David Hussey to hoick to mid off and he is caught by Mike Hussey. Out for 12 off 12. Hick is out too for 102. Mohammad Hafeez comes out to bat at Bangalore, while at Edgbaston it is the less well-known Gareth Andrew who replaces Hick. McCullum daps another four craftily over his shoulder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've seen it all before now. 179-3 off 18.

4.40pm: I'm bored with this now. Is my attention-span so bad that after an hour of this slap and giggle I am afflicted with tedium? Possibly but I think it is the sheer unrelenting nature of the match that doesn't appeal to me. I mean, McCullum has just done something pretty blooming impressive and yet he got barely seven seconds to soak up the crowd before the game moved on. If Twenty20 doesn't give you time to appreciate brilliance then it is not for me. For instance, McCullum has just done the most dainty shovel over fine leg off Zaheer for six and yet here we are again for the next ball. Slow down, take it steady, chill out. Sigh. Three overs to go - 172-2.

4.38pm: Well there is no denying at this stage who is the man of the match. Buying McCullum for $700,000 may just be the shrewdest investment any of the IPL owners ever made. Not just for his hundred, which he reaches with a driven two (made off only 53 balls), but for the way he has ignited the tournament. If this had happened next week it would still be impressive, but to do it on opening day ensures that people will be talking about the game for some time. The over is fairly uneventful, though, and just four runs come off it. 158-2 off 16.

4.35pm: Here's an interesting bit of news elsewhere. Graeme Hick, who is nearing his 42nd birthday, has just made his 135th first-class hundred, for Worcestershire at Edgbaston. Nice to know that some things don't change. Back in Bangalore, McCullum is at it again, powering Cameron White over mid-wicket for six and then driving him for four down the ground to move into the nineties. Obviously he's not literally hit Cameron White - even McCullum isn't that strong - but he hit a ball bowled by the Australian. Final ball of the over: and it is another six. That takes Big Mac on to 99. And now he waves at the Pavilion (if they have such things in this game) for a drink. I think he has earned it. 154-2 off 15

4.30pm: We're an hour in and only 14 overs have been completed, which is comparable with an iffish day at a Test match. Fairly slow progress for all the runs. Six runs come off Joshi's third over and it is 130-2.

4.27pm: WICKET. Punter goes for a slog at Kallis's first ball and he is caught in the deep by Praveen Kumar, a man with an enormous chavvy gold necklace, for 20 at a run a ball. Out walks David Hussey, who tucks his first ball off his hips for four. Hussey's big brother Mike is known as Mr Cricket, which is possibly the blandest nickname in sport. Maybe David can craft his own nickname this tournament. He whacks hard to gully but is denied a second four by a brilliant dive from Virat Kohli, the India under-19 captain. A wide follows - we've not had many of them this game - then McCullum whangs yet another four backwards of square. He looks in great nick, but as England will attest he has been all year. A single ends the over: 124-2 off 13.

4.25pm: Joshi comes with millimetres of bowling McCullum with his first ball and is promptly walloped back over his head with the second for Mac's fifth six. Mac and Punter have put on 50 off 39 balls. Some tidy bowling completes the over to limit the damage. 112-1 off 12 overs.

4.20pm: Alan Lee is out in Bangalore for The Times and he has filed this early comment on the opening ceremony. Go and have a look if you can spare the time. Meanwhile, Kallis has conceded his first boundary to Ponting, who follows the third-man four with a pull backwards of square for six. Strong shot, that. A reminder that Super Mac is not the only big hitter out there. Over ends with four byes after big-necked Boucher made a mess of gathering the ball. That's the hundred up: 102-1 off 11.

4.15pm: A quarter of the way through this match - already! - and spin has come on for the first time. Traditionally (if you can say that about a sport that is only five years old), spin has really come into its own in Twenty20, being harder to get away than quick bowling. Sunil Joshi, the left armer, is the first spinner to play in IPL and his first ball is popped up for a single to off; second ball is another single to leg, as is the third. The fourth, a good slow one, is prodded to off for a dot and then McCullum, unable to contain his impatience any longer, launches a big six over mid-wicket. That's his fourth six of the innings and is followed by a dot. Ten overs are up and it is 87-1.  McCullum's 50 came off 32 balls, by the way.

4.12pm: On comes Kallis for his first over, Wisden's Cricketer of the Year for 2007, even though he didn't get selected for the World Twenty20. Something to prove, maybe? His first two balls are perfect to Big Mac: a good LBW appeal and one left outside off. The third is another dot, driven straight to gully. Fourth ball is a single to mid on, fifth is a single to cover and the final one is a couple to the leg-side boundary. The fireworks have died down a lot now - 77-1 off nine

4.10pm: Zaheer has set two historic marks today: first man to concede a six and first to take a wicket in the IPL. His first ball of his third over is slower and missed by McCullum, who then takes a single to leg off the second. A scampered single off the third, then a driven single to mid off, a dabbed single to cover and a driven single. 73-1 off eight. It's tea at Canterbury, meanwhile, and Kent are in trouble, still 24 runs behind Notts in their second innings with only four wickets in hand. And brilliant news from Chelmsford: Essex have taken a fourth wicket - it's Ravi Bopara!

4.05pm: My God Mark Boucher's neck is huge. I'd never appreciated it before but he looks like a Springboks prop as he bends down behind the stumps to face Noffke. McCullum pushes a single off the first ball, then Ponting gets off the mark with a single to third man. Super Mac drives another one. Ponting dabs two more on the leg side, steady stuff this. One comes off the fifth ball with a push past gully and the over ends with an uppish drive to mid-off for one. Only half an hour in and I'm already feeling exhausted. What happened to the ebbs and flows of cricket? The action is unrelenting. And when on earth do you fit in trips to the bar and lavatory breaks? 68-1 off seven

4pm: First wicket! Jacques Kallis makes up for the inadequacies of the Indian fielders by holding on to a high chance at slip off the recalled Zaheer to dismiss Ganguly. He made 10 off 12 balls and out comes Ricky Ponting. He leaves his first ball outside off, blocks his second, slogs and misses at his third and leaves his fourth. Great over from Zaheer. 61-1 off six.

Pablo asks in the comments: "when is Angela Lansbury batting?" I don't know Pablo. I just turned over and Murder She Wrote had finished, to be replaced by Flog It, the antiques show. A slightly smug dealer has just told someone that he would love to buy a landscape painting but can't afford it. I'm sure that will make them feel great.

3.50pm: Well this is all quite exciting. Disco music breaks out again (Sadly not the theme from Knight Rider) as Ganguly, the Knight Riders' captain, pivots on his back leg and flicks Praveen away to leg for four. And then he drives, quite beautifully, to mid-wicket for one. An elegant stroke that, one that would not have looked out of place in a Test match. Shame that no one appreciated it. OK, here's McCullum again and it's a misfield that goes for four. Yuck, you really don't want that, it was quite a straightforward stop. Nice to see that in this brave new world the sub-standard fielding of Indians lives up to type. Dot ball comes next and then an edge to third man for one. Over ends with a dot. 60-0 after five.

3.45pm: Zaheer is taken off straight away and replaced by Ashley Noffke and his first ball is horrid. Wide, very wide, down the leg side and it's gone to the boundary. Next ball, McCullum swings around and hoicks Noffke for six backwards of square. Not the best start for him. Meanwhile, Essex have taken a third wicket at Chelmsford and David Masters is 30 per cent of the way towards a ten-for. Kolkata run a leg bye off the second ball. Third ball brings up Ganguly's first runs - four of them - but he should have been caught at fine leg. Must have been a local fielder as the commentators don't know who he is. Not great play from the Kolkata captain and he then swings wildly at the next ball and misses. A single comes off the next ball before McCullum takes strike and.... an enormous driven six over long off brings up the 50 after four overs.

3,40pm: I like Praveen Kumar. After Zaheer's disastrous opening over, Kumar continues with the steady stuff. Ganguly can't get his first two balls away and the third ball is a scampered leg bye again. Ganguly has faced four balls and not scored any runs yet, but now it is McCullum facing the youngster. And he clobbers the ball flat along mid-wicket for four - that takes him to 22 off 12 balls. Picks up a single off the next ball. Can Saurav get off the mark? No. 27-0 off three

3.35pm: Now it is Zaheer Khan after an excellent start by Kumar. McCullum pulls away as Zaheer runs in, distracted no doubt by some flashing bling in the crowd. First ball is a swing and a miss, the crowd appeal but the fielders don't. Second ball and we finally have the first runs off the bat, a swatted four over mid on from McCullum. Then he does it again, a bit squarer. Now things are heating up. Zaheer comes round the wicket and McCullum has an ungainly slog, aiming for mid-on but instead it sails over third man for six. And he follows it with a four on the leg side. Last four balls have gone for 18 runs. Final ball of the over is a dot. 21-0 after two overs

3.30pm: Praveen Kumar, a 21-year-old boy from Uttar Pradesh, will open the bowling for Bangalore, even if the caption says Zaheer Khan. Ganguly and McCullum are the two opening batsmen. First ball: Ganguly with his golden helmet and golden pads flicks at one outside leg stump and they run a leg bye. Second ball, McCullum shapes to cut and misses a ball that jags in. Third ball: missed down the leg side and it's a wide.

[AND IT IS TWO WICKETS DOWN AT CHELMSFORD; ESSEX ARE ON THE RAMPAGE!]

Third ball (part 2) is a dot to mid-wicket; fourth ball is left outside off (gosh, this is Test match scoring rates here); fifth ball another dot to the leg side and, finally, the sixth ball is another leg bye after a missed swing down leg. End of over 1: 3-0 - no runs off the bat. And we have the first of no doubt many advert breaks.

3.29pm: The umpires are wearing red and it looks as if Rudi Koertzen has grown a goatee especially for the occasion. Let's hope he doesn't mess this up like he did the World Cup final. Asad Rauf is the other umpire. And here's the most important news: Essex have taken a wicket against Northamptonshire. Earlier Ravi Bopara made 150 for the mighty Eagles. Good start lads.

3.25PM: Bangalore are wearing a fetching red and yellow outfit and a giant RC on their cap. That stands for Royal Challengers, not Rowing Club. Kolkata are in black and gold. Here are the teams:

Kolkata: Sourav Ganguly (capt), Ricky Ponting, Brendon McCullum, David Hussey, Mohammad Hafeez, Laxmi Shukla, Prasanta Saha, Ajit Agarkar, Murali Kartik and Ishant Sharma

Bangalore: Rahul Dravid (capt), Wasim Jaffer, Jacques Kallis, Cameron White, Virat Kohli, Balachandra Akhil, Mark Boucher, Sunil Joshi, Praveen Kumar, Ashley Noffke, Zaheer Khan.
The ones you haven't heard of are the local and under-19 players

3.20PM: Fans of Portuguese football will be delighted to learn that Maritima beat Naval 3-0. And now Setanta have finished messing about with third-rate football and they are about to bring us third-rate cricket instead. Rahul Dravid has called heads and won the toss; Bangalore will field. Meanwhile, at the Rose Bowl, rain has stopped play between Hampshire and Sussex.

3.10PM: Apparently Setanta's coverage doesn't start until ten minutes before the first ball, which seems a bit disrespectful but that's Twenty20 for you: shorter games, shorter build-ups. A friend in Bangalore tells me it is very noisy out there. The Washington Redskins cheerleaders have done their bit for the home side and we are only minutes away from the toss. Ooh the tension.

Hilariously, Sharad Powar, the head of the BCCI, was greeted with booing from the crowd at the opening ceremony. Nice to see that deference is well and truly dead. You can either have a brash, loud, de populis version of cricket, or you can have respect for authority, Sharad, not both. Lalit Modi does an "I have a dream" speech. He thinks he is Martin Luther King. Or possible Nehru. Meanwhile, Angela Lansbury doesn't trust a sharp-talking man in a sharp suit.

3PM: Half an hour to go and Setanta Sports, the official broadcaster of the IPL in England, are showing edited highlights of Portuguese league football. Not quite the build-up the organisers may have been hoping for in this country, but I guess we are not their target audience.

Meanwhile, over on Murder She Wrote, a woman with a very dubious-sounding Irish accent is saying something sinister. Ooh and this episode has got Patrick "Steed" Macnee on it as a special guest star. And now Angela Lansbury is singing. Match that Lalit Modi.

Well here we go: CRICKET WILL NEVER BE THE SAME, as everyone is saying in the same foreboding tones as the Discworld's Death, but will the first game in the Indian Premier League show us a brave new and exciting world, or will we find that beneath the glitter and the razzmatazz it is all a bit dull and insubstantial?

Join me on Line and Length from 3.30pm (British Summer Time) for live and cynical blogging of this extravaganza. Unless it gets really boring, in which case I'll be blogging on Murder, She Wrote over on BBC Two (I think the retired cop did it to get back at his ex-wife).

Comments

[Nesta]

An enjoyable enough spectacle but apart from McCullum's batting and Ishant Sharma's bowling there was not much to crow about.

http://nestaquin.wordpress.com/

[bhutti82]

T20 is fun when there is something for the bowlers and with first innings scores of 150-160. I think that is why the World cup is SA was so suucessful, most pitches offered just a tinge of movement to introduce a balance between bat and ball (though Stuart Broad may not agree)

[Peter McGuinness]

Wow.

What an ornament to the concept. I do not mean that sarcastically.

That first game literally exemplified T20.

Best wishes to all players - the older ones in particular certainly deserve the bucks. All the best to people who were thoroughly entertained too.

Each to their own.

The fact that some of us cannot fathom the appeal World Wrestling Entertainment do not mean that it doesn't legitimately enrapture a goodly number of otherwise discerning folk. Promoters of these affairs are to be heartily congratulated for their business prowess.

Passing off a turd as a Mars Bar is quite an achievement. The Emperor's new outfit is strikingly spendid, that's for sure.

Anyway - Go Hyderabad!! Woooooo!!!

[Oscar the Grouch]

Yum Cha commentary, Patrick, particularly apposite, methinks. I didn't see the match - my bin closes off for the night too early - but it certainly sounds like a pity it was so uneven. Nobody should be surprised at McCullum's performance, the man is super-dangerous, like Gilchrist at his best but bulked up and sweating amphetamines. When he's afire, he makes Symonds look positively conservative and thoughful. I believe if we all look on these matches as the best of slog'n'sling we can have a lot of fun - it's Life, Jim, but not as we know it....

[Patrick Kidd]

Abraham, You're speaking in riddles. Can you make yourself more clear? I don't think I'd ever feel at home at a leftwing paper. And as for the ghee reference, are you just saying I'm tubby? Fair comment, if you really felt you needed to make it, but a bit cruel.

[Patrick Kidd]

Hi Puneet, Welcome to L&L. I'm constantly baffled by how some Indians think that any negative comments from English writers are caused by sour grapes. I have no envy or bad feeling towards India for what they have done with IPL. If that's the way you want your cricket to be, then good luck to you.

Yes, wicket-takers can have an influence and they will need to carry on doing so if Twenty20 is to catch on. I feel that in any form the ideal contest is a balance between bat and ball, but while Kolkata's bowlers did very well this game they were immensely helped by the runs that they had behind them. If McCullum had not made so many, the bowling would have been more crucial.

Like you, I found World Twenty20 quite fun and there were more than a few good games in it. I disagree with you that there wasn't one game in the last 50-over World Cup that matched up to today's IPL game. That is patent rubbish - what about Ireland v Zimbabwe, England v Sri Lanka or Ireland v Pakistan for a start? - but I agree with your basic point that the 50-over World Cup was fairly dire. If you had read this blog for any length of time you would know that I have stood up for the excitement of IPL, but surely you can't claim that today's game was exciting. It was an immense anticlimax once McCullum really got going and once Bangalore were 9-2. But that's my opinion anyway.

[Puneet]

Can you write off a whole tournament on the strength of one game? If that was the case, test cricket would never have taken off. How many people would choose to watch football if their first experience was a Chelsea match? Too quick to judge, as most of the sour grapes English journos are. This game proved that wicket-takers CAN have an influence on T20; so much for it being only about the batsmen.

The team names are truly awful, but te cricket can still be fine entertainment. I was riveted to the T20 World Cup and I'm looking forward to more IPL on Setanta. Remember what a shambles the more established 50 overs game was in the last World Cup? There wasn't one game in that tournament to came close to today's IPL, so back off and judge later on.

[Abraham Thomas]

Patrick, how long before you start writing 4 "the Hindu" (a very communist commune, by the by) or Times of India? Know which part of your pan got Ghee mate.

[John Louis Swaine]

158 off 73 balls? This might be worth watching after all.

Now to decide what team to follow.

SRK's team apparently got their fashion advice from him and McCullum's astounding play aside, I really can't justify supporting a team with such a horrible logo.

"Super Kings" is a dumb name and I'm afraid as entertaining as it would be to support a team named after booze, "Royal Challengers" just aren't doing it for me.

Calling your team "Mumbai Indians" seems kind of pointless when your opponents are ALL from India so that rules out that team.

So do I support the Rajasthan Royals for their stylish player-coach choice in Shane Warne? Or perhaps the Kings XI Punjab? Well the Kings XI supposedly have a great team ethos, intent on supporting community but the Rajasthan Royals refused to purchase an 'icon' player so they didn't have to blow loads of dosh on a superstar (although one could argue that if your star has the kind of impact that McCullum just had, it might be worth it).

Hmm.. I think it might have to be the Royals, they do after all have the only English player in the league at the moment.

Now I just need to work out how to watch the blasted thing.

[Pablo]

Considering the fact that most of us are just stats geeks, can you elaborate on the avg. of commercial breaks per over Patrick? Just for us, less fortunate Setanta-deprived people, to have a feeling for the kind of coverage.

[Johnmc]

Just a thought - Given the nature of how the teams were put together when the stats are done at the end of the tournament will there be columns for average score, strike rate and value for money (or runs per $)?

[Pablo]

I'm confused. When is Angela Lansbury batting, again? How much did they pay for her in the auction anyway?

[Rusty]

'Twill be a terrible disappointment if cricket remains exactly the same after today/tonight.

I don't think I'll join you for the live blog. It's past my bedtime. I sat through the Ashes 2005 nights til 3am but can't imagine this could possibly have the same level of tension.