Biggest talking points of IPL 2017

Nitin Fernandes 19:31 18/05/2017
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  • MS Dhoni and Kieron Pollard [Sportzpics]

    This IPL has seen some great action on the field and also, there were a few things off the field that caught our eye during the course of the season.

    This edition saw more than its fair share of confusion, acrimony and bad luck.

    Here, we look at four talking points from this year’s tournament.

    INJURIES PLAY SPOILSPORT

    Indian Test stars Ravichandran Ashwin, Murali Vijay, and KL Rahul were ruled out of the tournament due to injuries even before a ball was bowled. Others such as Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Umesh Yadav, and Mohammed Shami missed the start of the season due to niggles.

    There were other absentees from the tournament such as Quinton de Kock and Mitchell Marsh which wasn’t ideal for a tournament of this magnitude.

    And as the tournament wore on, players like Brendon McCullum and AJ Tye picked up injuries. By the final stages of the tournament, a decent amount of the players had either been injured or left the tournament to be with their national teams.

    GOENKA’S HARSH TWEETS ON DHONI

    Before the season began, Rising Pune Supergiant made a surprising decision to replace MS Dhoni with Steve Smith as the captain of the team. With Dhoni not in great form at the start of the tournament, Harsh Goenka – brother of RPS owner Sanjiv Goenka – took pot shots at the former Indian captain on Twitter which did not go down well with many people.

    Dhoni’s wife Sakshi Singh Rawat took to Instagram at the time to post a picture of her sporting Chennai Super Kings (Dhoni’s former IPL franchise) colours and a passage about karma, which is assumed to be a reply to Goenka’s tweets.

    A post shared by Sakshi (@sakshisingh_r) on

    Interestingly, after Dhoni played a superb knock to help Pune reach the IPL final on Tuesday, Goenka posted a tweet praising the wicketkeeper-batsman.

    Guess, good sense finally prevailed.

    POLLARD AND MANJREKAR’S MISUNDERSTANDING

    Mumbai Indians’ Kieron Pollard was irked by some criticism from former Indian batsman Sanjay Manjrekar during a match against Kolkata Knight Riders and the West Indian cricketer let his thoughts known in a series of tweets.

    It all started when Pollard assumed Manjrekar had questioned his ‘brain’ and then unleashed a Twitter tirade, saying: “@sanjaymanjrekar u feel any positive can come out of your mouth bcuz u get pay to talk u can continue with your verbal diarrhea”.

    Manjrekar later clarified on Twitter that he never used the word ‘brainless’ to describe Pollard’s batting and was instead talking about his range.

    “Said “Does he have the range?” Using terms like ‘no brains’ or ‘brainless’ not my style. I can be critical but never insulting,” tweeted Manjrekar.

    Manjrekar was proven right as the IPL’s official website uploaded a video of his commentary during the said incident. The Indian commentator and Pollard also met each other later in the tournament which was great to see.

    NO GAMES FOR CHIRAG SURI

    Chirag Suri became the first UAE cricketer to get picked by an IPL team as he was bought by Gujarat Lions for his base price of INR 1 million at this year’s auction.

    The 22-year-old, though, did not get to play a single game throughout the season. Even when the Lions were reduced to just four overseas players in their squad due to injuries and international commitments, Suri was overlooked.

    Speaking to Sport360 after Gujarat’s exit from the tournament, Suri was pleased with the experience despite sitting out of all 14 matches. “It was a bit difficult for me not to play but it was a great experience for me,” he said.

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