I had lauded Lalit Modi as a great entrepreneur, but I was wrong.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

The allegations are thus:

Lalit Modi’s family members have a stake in 3 IPL teams (Kolkata Knight Rider’s, Rajastan Royals and Kings XI Punjab), apart from that Global Cricket Ventures was granted exclusive IPL web and mobile rights for 7 years. GCV is Modi’s step son in-law, Gaurav Burman’s company. No wonder Cricinfo and other online publication had such a tough time publishing IPL photos. Just outrageous.

The worst allegation is about the rigging of the second auction for the 2 new IPL teams. Modi set onerous bidding clauses ($1B networth and a $100 million bank gaurantee) so that only two favoured bidders, Videocon and the Adani group,  qualified and nobody else could even submit a bid. The man is a disgrace. He is not fit to be the Commissioner of the IPL.

Thank God, the BCCI President, Shashank Manohar, stepped in and cancelled the initial auction and removed the stringent bidding clauses. What a rip-off that would have been.

However, it was in trying to expose Shashi Tharoor’s nepotism by revealing the share holding pattern of owners of the Kochi IPL franchise, that Lalit Modi was hoisted by his own petard.

Yes, Modi did a great job marketing the IPL, but selling cricket in India doesn’t require a marketing genius. Modi should have paid more attention to the ticket buying public, and not on rigging the auction.

The stench from the top is unbearable. Lalit Modi has to go.

As soon as Dhoni hit the 4th ball of the final over, he knew he had hit it well enough to clear the boundary and finish the game. He took one quick look at the disappearing ball, put his head down, took a few steps down the pitch and let out a guttural scream of delight. And then he punched himself in the face to cap off the moment.

The man was adrenalized!

And so he should be; he had just launched the 3rd ball out of the stadium and into the Dhauladhar mountain range. A monster 108m hit. He had scored 16 runs of four balls and the Chennai Super Kings were in the semi-finals for the 3rd successive year.

Dhoni had his share of luck; Irfan Pathan almost got him with the second ball of the final over; a brave slower ball that cramped Dhoni but the mishit landed just short off Piyush Chawla at long off. In the previous over a thick edge of Rusty Theron flew off the bat and through the gloves of the leaping Kumara Sangakkara. Dhoni is always willing to fail while daring greatly, and this time he triumphed.

It was great match, and Kings XI Punjab were a valiant opponent. Surely they wouldn’t have finished IPL 3 at the bottom of the table, if Shaun Marsh had played the full season and Mahela Jayawardene had opened right from the beginning. I have always been a big fan of Romesh Powar’s classical off-spin bowling and he was just tremendous opening the bowling today. His delivery to get Matty Hayden was a classic. It looped over the batsman’s normal line of sight and turned and bounced to beat Hayden’s booming drive and the edge carried through to the slip. Powar then turned one sharply past Murali Vijay’s attempted leg side flick and was beautifully stumped by Sangakarra as Vijay’s forward momentum took him outside the crease. It was just fantastic spin bowling to watch. I also had the pleasure of watching another stumping as Piyush Chawla spun one past a Badrinath slog sweep and Sangakkara did the needful. As you can see, the stumping is my favourite mode of dismissal to watch. Chawla definitely deserves to be in the Indian team for the World T20, ahead of Amit Mishra. Mishra is a better Test match bowler, but his fielding in the IPL has ranged from being merely lazy to a complete horror show.

My halfway mark prediction was: “… the formidable teams are the Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Delhi Daredevils. I think RCB and DD have the best bowling attacks. However all three are well balanced teams and I figure that these teams should make the semi finals.”

Predictions in T-20 are a dire thing to hang your name onto. The Mumbai Indian’s are in, Delhi Daredevils are out and Bangalore is hanging on to the fourth place, although it will take a superhuman effort from Kolkata to get ahead of them on the net run rate in their last game. The second half performance of the Deccan Chargers has totally astonished me, they won five matches in a row. Quite staggering. Adam Gilchrist still hasn’t fired with the bat but Andrew Symonds, Rohit Sharma and T Suman have done really well. Pragyan Ojha’s left arm spin has been outstanding for the Chargers, topping the bowling charts with 20 wickets at an average of 19.

The Mumbai Indian’s are definitely the best team this season. They have the best bowling attack - Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan & Lasith Malinga are all in the Top 10 wicket takers list, supported by a robust batting line up headed by the indomitable Sachin Tendulkar.

Delhi Daredevils failure to progress is shocking. Dirk Nannes, Amit Mishra and Umesh Yadav all turned in good bowling performances. However, their batting (Sehwag, Gambhir, Dilshan) has been below par, and I think the Feroze Shah Kotla wicket has a lot to do with that. I don’t think any team has won while batting second at Delhi. The Kotla pitch is a shame.

I picked three teams for the semi-final - Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and if Bangalore manages to hang on to the 4th place, then I would have gotten 2 out of 3 right - which is a pretty good success rate for T-20 predictions. :-)

Yes, Chennai Super Kings scored 246 and Murali Vijay made 127 of just 56 balls. But for me, the man of the match was Doug Bollinger.

I am talking about the man who bowls 4 overs for 15 runs, claims 2 wickets in a T-20 game where the opposing team scores 223. Just unbelievable. It wasn’t all about pace, it was intelligent slower balls, a great bouncer and and perfect yorker length balls. I think he bowled about 12 dot balls in the game. Cricinfo should change the way they show bowling stats, and remove the unnecessary maiden over column and add a new dot ball column for T-20’s.

Adding to the superlative bowling performance was Bollinger’s catch on the boundary line to get rid Yusuf Pathan. I had tweeted earlier about David Hussey’s catch to dismiss Paul Collingwood, and this one was almost as good. However, Bollinger is a tall fast bowler and he is not supposed to be as athletic as the sprightly David Hussey. What a cricketer! I read somewhere that players are practicing these boundary line catches, and after watching these two Australians do it, and then Dave Warner also almost do the same thing, I am convinced that the Aussies are practicing these catches. It is just incredible to watch.This is another T20 innovation - the boundary line parry, hop, skip and catch.

The IPL is a lot of fun.

I’ve seen some clean hitting in the IPL before, but this was something else.

Robin Uthappa knocked the first couple of balls for a two and a single respectively and then came the blitz.

The equation was 48 runs from 24 balls when Brett Lee was brought back to bowl the 17th over. The Kings XI Punjab wanted to apply pressure with a tight over from their premier fast bowler.

The first ball was low full toss, and Uthappa swung the bat in a short straight arc and barely got under it, but the ball just flew off his bat, straight over long-off, 10 rows back. SIX. 87meters.

Next ball was pitched short of a good length, and was muscled straight back over the non striker and went one bounce into the sight screen. FOUR

Next two balls resulted in a SINGLE each.

The fifth ball was much shorter and was absolutely hammered away over midwicket. SIX. 96 meters.

Brett Lee confidence was shot and he bowled the next one way down the leg side for FIVE wides.

The last ball was another low full toss but was hit along the ground past the bowler for TWO runs.

The equation now: 23 of 18 balls.

It was all over and the Royal Challengers Bangalore won with 5 balls to spare.Yes, Brett Lee was short of match practice but he was still bowling around 140kph.

Later, Uthappa was asked about his plan when he went to bat, he said:

“Have a look at a couple of balls and if it is in my range, then go after it.”

And did he go after it or what!

Asked about his clean hitting, he replied:

“I’ve been doing a lot of strength straining. I’ll probably attribute the clean hitting to that, I have been working quiet hard as far as my strength is concerned and I can see a visible difference in the strength I have got now.”

Dude, that was some impressive hitting. Your ‘power lifts’ are definitely working.

Halfway through the third season of the IPL the formidable teams are the Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Delhi Daredevils. I think RCB and DD have the best bowling attacks. However all three are well balanced teams and I figure that these teams should make the semi finals.

However, stranger things have happened in cricket.