26th March 2010 - TOI : It was great to see Warnie and the Royals playing so well on Wednesday night. I’ve no doubt they were treating the match as a ‘must-win’ game and they responded magnificently with a comprehensive victory. Unfortunately the King’s XI were in a similar situation and defeat means they are now facing the very real prospect of dropping off the pace of IPL3 before we have even reached the half-way point.
Punjab probably need to win three or four in a row to get back into the hunt and restore some confidence. I actually find it hard to understand why they are not winning more games with the playing talent they have at their disposal and a proven and successful coach in Tom Moody. Sometimes, cricket is inexplicable. I guess someone has to lose.
But Warnie was the star of the show, wasn’t he? Even when he was doing nothing there always seemed to be a camera on him...and he seemed to know it! The IPL could almost have been created for Shane. He is the ultimate entertainer of the modern era and he remains as watchable and as much of a drawcard today as he was 12 years ago.
The point about Warne which interests me, however, is the same one which interests me about the other two members of the Aussie trio of legends,Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist. Physically, how are they coping? And how long can they go on?
Personal experience tells me that the greatest obstacle to a long career is not injuries - it is recovery time to get over them, or the lack of it. Everybody gets injured, in every sport, but it is the amount of recovery time an athlete has in between them which determines the level of their performance. In the case of the three Aussies who are all close to 40, although the pace of the IPL is relentless and there is no time to recover from niggles between games, they can spend three or four months preparing for the tournament and ensuring that they come into it as fully fit as they probably ever have been in their careers.
There isn’t much a sportsman can do about deteriorating eyesight or fading reflexes, but while they remain as good as ever and a cricketer has the time and motivation to look after the rest of his body, then I don’t see why the IPL - and similar T20 tournaments - can’t prolong the careers of certain cricketers well into their 40s. Reputations, of course, will count for nothing. I’m not suggesting that a tournament such as the IPL should ever contain an element of the ‘seniors tour’ just because a cricketer is popular! But I don’t see any reason why some great players couldn’t be just as good in this format at the age of 45 as they were at 35 when, perhaps, the demands of Test and ODI cricket became too much.
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