Kings XI Punjab coach Tom Moody knows first-hand how passionate India’s cricket fans were about the inaugural Indian Premier League tournament.
And the Australian believes there’s a “lot of intrigue” among local fans about the second version of the Twenty20 tournament to be played in South Africa after organisers made the late switch from India for security reasons.
Moody, who coached Sri Lanka to the 2007 World Cup final, has assembled a strong lineup to represent Punjab including Sri Lankan stars Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene for the tournament starting this weekend.
But some of his Australian players such as Brett Lee, James Hopes and Shaun Marsh are only expected to be available for the last two weeks after touring with Australia to Dubai for the one-day series against Pakistan.
Elsewhere the Australian flavour is evident across all eight franchises, including five Australian coaches – Moody, Delhi’s Greg Shipperd, Kolkata’s John Buchanan, his opposite in coaching philosophy, Rajasthan Royals captain-coach Shane Warne and Deccan’s Darren Lehmann.
Warne admits his team’s title defence will suffer through having last year’s player of the tournament Shane Watson on national duties in Dubai.
While Moody says it’s very hard to pick a winner this year given the way top players will float in and out of their franchise teams, the reaction of the cricket public is also tough to predict.
It’s believed several teams were keen to play as many games in Durban as possible given the large Indian population in the beachside city.
Hulking Queenslander Matthew Hayden has already been surfing Durban’s warm waters in preparation for his campaign with the Chennai Super Kings.
They’ll be captained by India’s M.S. Dhoni, which won’t hurt Chennai’s attempts to win over Durban fans.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Moody told AAP at the Kings XI team’s training base in Port Elizabeth this week.
“We play six games in Durban, a large percentage of our games in an area where it’s heavily populated by an Asian community.
“We’ve picked up (left-arm quick) Yusuf Abdulla who’s from Durban and has an Asian heritage.
“We may get a connection with the Durban fans through that.
“Particularly in places like Durban there’s going to be a strong following and I think there’s a lot of intrigue out there too.
“It’s not going to be anything like India. That’s a very unique place to play cricket, especially in this new format of Twenty20 with the combination of how they’ve mixed entertainment, the Bollywood with cricket.
“It has really captured people’s imagination.
“In South Africa, I think there’s a lot of intrigue just purely in the cricket and how suddenly all these international cricketers are coming into one competition.
“It’s not a World Cup, it’s not anything of that nature. But it’s a unique format to be enjoyed.”
Moody, the Western Australia state coach, is proud to be part of Australia’s colonisation of the cricketing world, as shown by the country’s off-field dominance in the lucrative IPL.
“That has been a bit of a trend over the last decade or so in world cricket,” Moody says.
“We’ve seen a lot of Aussie coaches in international positions.
“I was in Sri Lanka, John Dyson is in the West Indies, Greg Chappell was in India (and Geoff Lawson was in Pakistan).
“There has been a lot of Australian influence in coaching and I think that goes with the success of the Australian cricket team over the past two decades.
“In (English) County we see a huge number of Aussie overseas pros in that competition.
“Success in a cricketing sense breeds opportunities for other areas, whether it be coaching, physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, and I think you’ll find an equal number of those influences in world cricket as well.”
The intrigue over Lee’s fitness following ankle surgery in January has been a talking point in world cricket this week. Australia had been hoping to take the 32-year-old paceman with them from South Africa to Dubai for the one-day series against Pakistan starting on April 22.
However after meeting with Lee in Port Elizabeth, Australia’s medical and coaching staff have declared the NSW quick not fit to return to battle and he’ll continue his rehabilitation with his IPL side.
If Lee returns to full fitness he’ll play against Pakistan, only returning to Moody’s side for the final week or two of the IPL season.
“It depends on whether you qualify for semi-finals and all that type of stuff. They are only going to be available for a handful of games,” Moody says of Lee, Hopes and Marsh, who was the tournament’s leading scorer last year.
“That’s the nature of the beast. We only had Brett for four games last year.
“Until there’s a window created at the end of the tours program which is 2011 I think, we’re not going to have 100 percent occupancy.
“The English guys are only here for two weeks, the West Indians are here for only three weeks.
“In a way that’s part of the beauty of the competition. It opens the opportunity for other players to come in and make their statement in the competition.
“We saw Shaun Marsh do that last year. He got his opportunity and he was outstanding. It really launched his one-day career.
“Each side has access to 10 overseas players and you can only play four.
“So it just makes your job a little bit easier not having to tap a world-class player on the shoulder and tell him he’s not playing.”
Moody says with so many top players on the books at each franchise, teams would be “crazy” not to share the leadership duties around, like Buchanan has suggested to Kolkata with his “four captains” theory.
The former Australian coach has been heavily criticised, particularly by Kolkata’s 2008 skipper and returning player Saurav Ganguly.
“Yeah and probably unfairly really. I think people have probably mis-read what he has thrown out there,” Moody said in defence of Buchanan.
“But it’s not the first time that has happened. He is a very deep thinker about the game and thinks very laterally.
“I believe we should embrace people like that.
“Every successful team generally has good leaders within the group. Most team structures in this day and age have leadership groups formalised and they carry out a number of meetings and a number of duties within the team.
“So it has even gone to a further step these days than what it was in the 1999 World Cup, where Tugga (Steve Waugh) as an old mate taps you on the shoulder and asks you for a coffee and sits down and explains that he wants you to play a leadership role or a senior role within the group and he wants the constant feedback on and off the field.
“It has moved on to a more formal approach these days but nothing’s really different.
“Not every team has that team dynamic and has those leadership characteristics.
“John Buchanan feels that Kolkata has that dynamic and wants to draw from that and you’d be crazy not to.
“We have that dynamic. It’s crazy not to draw on the experience of Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara and Simon Katich and Brett Lee.”
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