Gilly Garu & Gibbs Garu !

Gibbs Garu & Gilly Garu charging the Aavakai rampage @ IPL II & HOW?


In the inaugural launch of the IPL tourney at India, I was one of strongest supporters of a star studded Deccan Chargers Team. Not just because of my home town at Hyderabad but the sheer quality of the star cast of the games best entertainers with the Willow.

Be it the silken grace of home grown VVS or the assembly of the one greatest team of chargers like Afridi, Symonds, Gibbs and Gilchrist. It was sad indeed that only four of the dynamite foreign cricketers could play in the final 11.

It was how either Afridi or another world star Scott Styris played which left the bowling department bone dry with tepid local talent. The talented Ojha lacked confidence against the aggressing oppositions. Add to that Gibbs was going through a horrendous form and messy personal issues adding to this sagging career prospect which eventually got him out of the SA National team.

Gilchrist was mid way asked to shoulder additional responsibility to lead the team and players like Sehwag and Gilly have a binary success rate at their stint at the crease. “Have Bat Will Hit” is the motto they live by. In essence they fail as often as they succeed.

Afridi is a player like a gambler at Las Vegas. And gambles don’t pay off even if they are bestowed with immense talents. Symonds has a short stint and VVS injured for best part of the tournament. Rohit Sharma came off with half a dozen attractive innings and if the chargers had any gain last year, he was the one visible prop up.

Little Surprise was it then that my friends from Mumbai and Bangalore branding them as “Mobile Chargers”

But this time the Deccan Charges are mobile on the fast lane right from the start of their innings. Thanks to Gibbs Garu and Gilly Garu both firing all cylinders and clicking 4 out of the 5 outings thus far.

Back at Andhra Garu is a suffix to a name which adds reverence and respect. Both the emotions will be plenty for Gibbs and Gilly Garu for their class acts this season

What it does to the team is by 5th over the Chargers are ahead with 50 or 60 plus runs with three of the opposition bowlers demoralized. The great thing about Gibbs and Gilly is that when they get a start they go some distance & so does the white ball into the stands.

With runs on board the freshly augmented bowling department with import from West Indies – Field Edwards slings them firmly into the game with this fiery spells and R P Singh swings the door of the opposition batting line up wide open to Ojha to spin his web of uncertainty with clever left arm spin with rich variety of variance.

Venu down the order showed a glimpse of his slogging talents last year has the second edition of IPL landscape as a playground to showcase his promising talents as it is for the others like Ravi Teja, Rohit, Scott Styris and Azhar Bilakia.
For now be it Hyderabad , Secunderabad , Vizag or Vijayawada , Guntur or Gudivada the local will pray for Gibbs Garu and Gilly Garu to come good every game , so that the Deccan Chargers go on to win the IPL Cup this time. Today they are contented to be on top of the points table which is a delight considering that they were the bottom most team last year.

"SAY.. WHACK !

Krish Srikkanth, the yesteryear world cup star was the then premier one day specialist. A swashbuckling opener who captured the imagination of the followers of the game with his penchant for driving the cricket ball over the fielders in the inner circle. His scores of 30 plus often times gave the much needed impetus to the Indian batting line up of world stars that made tons of runs in test cricket with their brand of block mostly and rarely push and run cricket.

Romesh Kaluwitharna, Mark Greatbatch, Simon O Donnel and some other bunch of pinch hitters later made the brand of batting pioneered by Krish Srikkant mainstream.

And then a generation of super talented folks like Mark Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Sour av Ganguly, Tendulkar, Sayeed Anwar,Jayasuriya,Afridi,Hershelle Gibbs et al made the first 15 overs of cricket as interesting as the slog overs. They brought an element of art and science to the way cricket balls sailed over the heads of fielders over to the dancing stands.

Virender Sehwag debuted somewhere in between the Sourav, Waugh, Tendulkar, Jayasuriya and Gilchrist times. And then ..boy ..hasent he come of age to script a brand of cricket that is only getting more famous by each day across each new format of the game. With Sehwag there is a romantic charm of mind over matter brilliance. An ingredient filled with a possibility what one Krish Srikkant mumbled as "Have Bat, Will Hit " strategy.

Pitch,Toss, Seamers , Tear Away pacers , Spinners, Test Match , One day Internationals, T 20 or whatever comes next, matches at home or matches away..this Guy "SAY WAGS" his tail to any situation and HOW?

The 125 run brazen blistering ball against the black caps made mockery of the boundary line, power plays , bowler reputations and even the century mark jitters irrelevant. An age and time in a sport where the greatest players wind down their speed gears when they reach a milestone this lad from Delhi gets his arms to swing the willow with the greatest arc to send the glozzy ball sailing over the boundary ropes with alarming regularity. And be it a hundred, double hundred or triple hundred the milestones don’t really matter. The style and approach remain as menacing as ever with the result of half a dozen runs scaling Sewagh's reputation to stratospheric heights.

Sewagh seem to have the head of a Dalai Lama on his shoulders which at the crease. His mind so uncluttered that his game plan seems so simple for him. At NewZealand he even got a few shot which was not in his rich repertoire so far. The hook of the back foot and a pull to square leg. In the post match conference he to was surprised by his own admission that "Where those strokes came from"

For a man who scored more that 250 runs in a single day , he sure does have tons of talents and deeds yet to enthrall us ! To me he is an amalgamation of artists like Azhar, Sangakara , Gilchrist, Lara with the appetite for big innings of a Dravid,Ponting and Border.

Mark my words by the time this nawab from najafgarh is finished he will me more revered than tendulkar. He will upstage the master by the sheer quality of his selfless brand of entertaining cricket in the forms of the game to unfold in the future. I only pray he is fit as a fiddle and his appetite for runs inexorable. This guy is a legend in the making !