IPL and World Cup

The timing of the IPL was perfect. BCCI took the advantage of the fact that India had won the inaugural T20 world cup. I think it would have been difficult for BCCI and Lalit Modi to introduce IPL had the performance of India in the last world cup been similar to this year's world cup.

Was the timing of IPL perfect or the timing of the Indian team's performance?

When the inaugural World cup was held already countries were having domestic T20 tournaments. Its an open secret that India is the biggest market for cricket.So a domestic T20 tournament was round the corner in India taking into consideration the popularity it gained in countries like West Indies & Pakistan. If you remember the match against South Africa where they were chasing 150 odd runs and struggled to even reach the par score to reach the semis.The point which I am trying to make is that BCCI needed to announce the IPL at a point when it will be a sure shot hit. Indians performed well or may be were forced to perform well in the inaugural T20 Worldcup and made life easy for BCCI. The finals with Pakistan was an icing on the cake.

You never know India did well (or were made to do well) in the last world cup to make IPL a hit.

Go short with India

In the last two matches of T20 world cup, Indian batsmen have been found wanting against aggressive pace bowling. West Indies and yesterday England used the same tactics to keep the Indian batsmen under check. Fidel Edwards slingy action means that his bouncers will skit from the turf and yesterday I thought all the England fast bowlers bowled really magnificently. They had a definite plan against the Indian batsmen and executed it to perfection. Raina is a wonderful player but showed his vulnerability against short pitch stuff. Ravindra Jadeja struggling for most part oif the innings meant that the run rate went out of reach for Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan who tried their level best but couldn't convert the defeat into victory.
Stuart Broad and Sidebottom bowled excellent overs in the end. Broad has a big heart to come back in such a manner especially after having bowled the last over against Netherland for a lost cause and in his last match against India Yuvraj singh hit him for 6sixes in an over.
I was watching the match with my friends and when 60 runs were needed of 30 balls i told them the Yuvraj's crucial miss field in the last over of Harbhajan could make the difference. In the end we lost by 3 runs. Some of the players looked relaxed (rather happy) even during the stages when India were down.Dont know if it means something.
Dhoni made a terrible mis calculation I guess when 9 runs were needed of 2 balls Yusuf hit the ball although there was only 1 in it they should have gone for the second run atleast we sould have had the chance of leveling the scores of the last ball. Also it was strange to see England booed at their home ground. As Collingwood said that incident meant no pre match motivational talk was required.
It was thrilling to watch the match nonetheless.