TNPL 2021 OVERVIEW
Way back in 2004 and 2005, when Australia and England men, Newzealand and England women played the shortest format of cricket, the T20, nobody anticipated that this would be the future of cricket and would lay a platform for many young talents to blossom and rule the cricketing world. Even for the seniors who were accustomed to only the traditional formats of Test and ODI, this was a very new chapter to be opened and read. T20 has changed the mindset of the youngsters in quick runs, raising excitement of the audience, keeping the matches hooked till the end and many more and in other ways, increased the business aspect of the franchises, cricket boards, stakeholders, sponsors etc.
When the World T20 was introduced as a global format in 2007, things were getting to a start and teams were slowly accustomed to the format. The Indian National cricket team, under the guidance of new captain MS Dhoni, beat all odds to clinch the maiden T20 WC. ICL, a now defunct league made it’s stamp between 2007 and 2009 before it was shut down permanently following fixing allegations.IPL followed suit after that and slowly T20 leagues around the globe started with BBL in Australia, Super Smash in New Zealand, CPL in West Indies, BPL in Bangladesh, PSL in Pakistan. After the success of IPL, the T20 league craze got even more better with regional T20 leagues coming up to find the local talents to clinch a deal in IPL and move slowly into the national team.
KPL (Karnataka Premier League) started the first regional T20 league in India with its inception in 2009/10 and continued till 2019 until the corona pandemic struck and kept things on hold. Following the success of KPL, the TNPL (Tamilnadu Premier League) started in 2016 and has now conducted five editions of the tournament. Other regional T20 leagues include the Mumbai T20 league, Kerala KCA’s President Cup T20, Odisha Premier League, Saurashtra Premier League and many more.
TNPL had been successful in finding talents and getting picked up by the IPL franchises and picked to the national team in players like N Jagadeesan, Washington Sundar, T Natarajan, Varun Chakravarthy, Sanjay Yadav, Manimaran Siddharth. The latest edition of the TNPL was held from 19 Jul - 15 Aug 2021 with the 2020 edition not happening due to COVID-19. 8 teams participated and fought for the ultimate goal of crowning themselves champions in the tournament. The teams which participated were:
- Chepauk Super Gillies
- Ruby Trichy Warriors
- Dindigul Dragons
- Salem Spartans (previously known as Albert Tuti Patriots)
- Lyca Kovai Kings
- Siechem Madurai Panthers (previously known as Madurai Super Giants)
- Nellai Royal Kings (previously known as VB Thiruvallur Veerans and VB Kanchi Veerans)
- IDream Tiruppur Tamizhans (previously known as Idream Karaikudi Kaalai)
TNPL 2021 at a glance
Courtesy: TNPL Website
Chepauk Super Gillies entered the tournament as the defending champions and favourites to defend the title with the likes of R Satish, K Gandhi, M Siddharth, R Alexander being retained. They traded R Sai Kishore from Ruby Trichy Warriors in the 2019 edition and captained the team and N Jagadeesan who previously played and led Dindigul Dragons and took them to the finals of the 2019 editions. Stars like Abhinav Mukund (switched to commentary in TNPL), Dinesh Karthik (commentating for SkySports in England), S Aniruddha and M Vijay (pulled out due to personal reasons) did not take part in the prestigious tournament and it was upto the young guns to fill the atmosphere and make the tournament dazzling.
Nellai Royal Kings, Salem Spartans and IDream Tiruppur Tamizhans entered the tournament as a very fresh and refurbished team starting from scratch and hardly many senior and experienced players in the fray. Lyca Kovai Kings, Madurai Panthers, Ruby Trichy Warriors and DIndigul Dragons had a chunk of young district players who were raring to go and prove their worth in the tournament, hoping to get themselves noticed by the IPL scouts along with the big stars from the TN circuit.
The tournament was held completely in MA Chidambaram stadium, fondly known as Chepauk due to the restrictions imposed by the state government of Tamilnadu for COVID protection. The tournament saw 352 wickets taken overall with pacers ruling the roost with 222 wickets and spinners taking 130 wickets. The tournament saw the emergence of the young power talent in all departments of the cricket with Sai Sudarshan from Lyca Kovai Kings, Amit Sathvik from Ruby Trichy Warriors turning everyone’s eyes towards their flamboyant hitting. Ashwath Mukumthan from Nellai Royal Kings, Gurjapneet Singh from Dindigul Dragons, Mathivannan from Ruby Trichy Warriors provided stellar performance with the ball with their deceptive arm balls, slow cutters, and swinging deliveries. The seniors also stepped up to the situation and lent their hand to the youngsters and to the team contributing their part. Vivek Raj from Dindigul Dragons for his monstrous hitting, R Satish from Chepauk Super Gillies for his deceptive slow balls and lambasting the opposition bowlers, M Ashwin and Vijay Sshankar from the Salem Spartans contributing with both the ball and bat and many more.
The most interesting team in the tournament were the Ruby Trichy Warriors. They truly wore the badge of Underdogs in the tournament with no big stars, more youngsters and more district players with no exposure to this grand tournament, led by a veteran captain in Rahil Shah. Every cricket fanatic who followed this tournament right from its inception wrote off this team and predicted that they would finish either 7th or 8th unlike the other editions and would be a proven failure. But they rewrote history and shut all the mouths of the experts and cricket fanatics by storming into the finals and giving a tough fight, mentally draining out the opposition. Notably, this was their first time entry into the playoffs across editions and their first time entry into playoffs was a stylish entry into the finals!!!!! The leading wicket taker of the TNPL 2021 was medium pacer Saravana Kumar who claimed 13 wickets with his notable and memorable wickets of K Gandhi and N Jagadeesan in the Qualifier 1 wherein he bowled bamboozling off cutters and rattled their stumps. Mathivannan, a young spinner made all turn heads towards him with a spell of 0.4-0-0-3 in his team’s first match against Nellai Royal Kings. Indeed, an astonishing spell!!! Amit Sathvik, a young talent from Chennai, showed his prowess with the bat for the team and scored about 197 runs from 9 matches he played. Adithya Ganesh and Nidish Rajagopal, seniors of the team took stride in the finishing stages of the tournament and became the top 2 scorers for their team with 249 and 306 runs to their tally in the tournament. Nidish Rajagopal ended the tournament as the 4th highest run getter of the tournament.
The Nellai Royal Kings and the Salem Spartans, two new franchises replacing the VB Kanchi Veerans and Albert Tuti Patriots respectively, had their squads refurbished with new faces. Daryl Ferrario from Kerala changed his base from Kerala to TN and captained the Salem Spartans. The Salem side had the likes of Vijay Shankar, Murugan Ashwin and slingy sensation of TNPL 2019, G Periyaswamy. The Nellai Royal Kings had the Baba brothers play together for the first time in the TNPL tournament history along with the Malinga-esque Athisayaraj Davidson, Sanjay Yadav. Both these teams had a fairytale ride in the TNPL 2021 with the Nellai Royal Kings missing out the playoffs by a whisker to Lyca Kovai Kings while the Salem Spartans had a forgettable journey, their batting letting them down big time. Some stellar performers from both the sides include M Ashwin, G Periyaswamy, V Shankar, Baba brothers, Pradosh Ranjan Paul, Sanjay Yadav, Athisayaraj Davidson.
The IDream Tiruppur Tamizhans, led by the TN bowling stalwart M Mohammed were a fresh team missing the services of the TN state captain Dinesh Karthik who was engaged with commentating duties in the UK and had a totally young squad to deal with. Aswin Crist was the other senior player in the setup with Mohammed and a year or two older in the tournament in Maan Bafna. The batting of the team was always burdened upon the middle order of Maan Bafna, Mohammed, A Crist with the top order failing many times, not capitalising on starts or having brittle partnerships. But the team showed intent and were able to clinch three games out of 7 games played, with a thriller against Lyca Kovai Kings wherein the decisive over was bowled by the captain and he took on the pressure to clinch a memorable victory for the team.
Siechem Madurai Panthers, winners of the 2018 edition, entered the tournament as one of the favourites of the tournament along with Chepauk Super Gillies, had a very bad tournament compared to the standard of players they possess. The team retained the services of keeper batter KB Arun Karthick, all rounders Kiran Akash and J Kousik and Aushik Srinivas but couldn’t go past the finish line of the playoff qualification. They had middle order batter NS Chaturved traded from the Dindigul Dragons and he was appointed as the captain of the franchise. They had many young guns in keeper Praveen Kumar, Sugenthiran, spinner B Rocky, pacer V Gowtham from Salem and from the cricket school of T Natarajan in the fold. The team crumbled at times in the batting department with NS Chaturved, B Anirudh Sita Ram, J Kousik and KB Arun Karthick showing intent at times. With just two spinners to support, their pacers did most of the work in the bowling claiming about 35 wickets of the team’s total of claiming 40 wickets. Kiran Akash, R Silambarasan, Gowtham and J Kousik were the pacers who did the horse work for the team.
Dindigul Dragons, another strong franchise of the tournament had the likes of CSK recruit and southpaw Hari Nishaanth, all rounder and batting monster Vivek Raj as the seniors with the TN legend S Badrinath taking up coaching duties and one of the leading pacers of the TN state team Yo Mahesh assisting Badrinath. The team had many young guns in Gurjapneet Singh, L Vignesh, Mokit Hariharan, M Silambarasan, R Sutesh and keeper Mani Bharathi. The team acquired the services of veteran middle order batter R Srinivasan and appointed him as the captain in their initial matches. But soon, he was released of the captain duties and the captaincy was handed over to Hari Nishaanth.The team was an example of captain lead from the front with their captain leading the batting charts with 368 runs and others chirping in with their contributions when the team needed. The young bowlers ensured that the team would be saved when occasion arises with their arm balls, slow balls, cutters, yorkers etc. playing a major role in their march to the playoffs. But the team fought tooth and nail only to be dismantled cheaply by Chepauk Super Gillies in the Qualifier 2.
Lyca Kovai Kings were another franchise which had the NEVER SAY NEVER attitude and fought till the last to progress to the final stages. The team had their captain in middle order explosive batter Shahrukh Khan and had seniors in K Vignesh, GS Raju and Abhishek Tanwar traded from Chepauk Super Gillies and Siechem Madurai Panthers respectively. They had young guns in Sai Sudarshan, Ajith Ram, Yudeeshwaran, R Divakar who tapped in with their performances when the team needed. Sai Sudarshan, in particular, hogged the limelight and made all eyes turn towards him with his explosive batting and proving a point to the scouts and to the cricket fanatics. The team had their share of wins and losses and their special win against Nellai Royal Kings in their final league match ensured they had the final smile to enter the playoffs. But they were decisively defeated by Dindigul Dragons, making it the fifth time to lose out in the playoffs stage and not progressing to the finals.
The champions Chepauk Super Gillies, showed again to the world why they were the champions of the TNPL for the third time with stellar performance after initial hiccups in the tournament. They started the tournament with a rain marred match wherein veteran R Satish bagged 5 wickets and started the tournament on a high. They had young batter S Radhakrishan, who almost resembles Mandeep Singh in his batting stance and style who played some crucial match winning innings towards the end of the tournament. The team coached by Hemang Badani follows the style of IPL franchise CSK, with their strong spin trio of Sai Kishore, M Siddharth and R Alexander playing around the opponent batters.
On the whole, TNPL 2021 showed one thing very clearly, that no one can’t comfortably qualify to the playoffs comfortably and that they have to fight tooth and nail to place their hands on the championship trophy. SOme of the highlighting events which happened in the 2021 edition of TNPL were:
- S Janani was the first female umpire to officiate in the history of TNPL in the 6th match of the tournament between Chepauk Super Gillies and Nellai Royal Kings.
- TNPL had its 150th match happened in the season in the clash between Nellai Royal Kings and Salem Spartans (Match 23)
- Sai Kishore, lead spinner of the Chepauk Super Gillies registered his 50th wicket across all editions when he scalped Ashwin Venkatraman of Lyca Kovai Kings.
- R Srinivasan of Dindigul Dragons and KB Arun Karthick of Siechem Madurai Panthers registered 1000 runs in TNPL history.
My TNPL 2021 Team of the tournament: Sai Sudarshan (Lyca Kovai Kings), N Jagadeesan(WK) (Chepauk Super Gillies), Hari Nishaanth (Dindigul Dragons),Baba Aparajith (Nellai Royal Kings), Shahrukh Khan (Lyca Kovai Kings), J Kousik (Siechem Madurai Panthers), Vivek Raj (Dindigul Dragons), M Mohammed(C) (IDream Tiruppur Tamizhans), Saravana Kumar (Ruby Trichy Warriors), Sai Kishore (Chepauk Super Gillies), M Ashwin (Salem Spartans)
Reserves: G Periyaswamy (Salem Spartans), Gurjapneet Singh (Dindigul Dragons), Athisayaraj Davidson (Nellai Royal Kings), S Radhakrishnan (Chepauk Super Gillies), Baba Indrajith (WK) (Nellai Royal Kings), Sanjay Yadav (Nellai Royal Kings), Ajith Ram (Lyca Kovai Kings)
Note: The bigger team picked due to the enormous talent of the picked players, so the team is an 18 member squad.
