Yuzvendra Chahal returns: It's the Indian Premier League again!

"Yuzi" Chahal's unique celebration after taking a hat-trick (three wickets in three balls) in last year's IPL 

It is the IPL again - the Indian Premier League; which means the highest overall standard of T20 cricket in the world; with a match (sometimes two) for us to view every day, and for many weeks. 

The team I have supported recently is the Punjab Kings, who come from the north (including several Sikhs in the team) and play in one of the most beautiful Test Match grounds in the world: Dharamshala, nestling beneath the Himalayas:

 

There is something about the atmosphere and camaraderie of PBKS that I like, and several players - including my current favourite: Yuzvendra "Yuzi" Chahal. 

Chahal is something of a legend, having taken more wickets in the IPL than anyone else; and having won the coveted "Purple Cap" in 2022 for the highest number of wickets in a season (27 wickets in 17 games, bowling a maximum of four overs per game). 

He usually looks very un-healthy - rather like an emaciated and renegade "street person" - being very short, gap-toothed, extremely underweight, and with many tattoos. 

Yet he is respectably bespectacled off the pitch, and was an India youth international chess player. 

So Chahal is that best kind of of all good cricketers; a vivid and unique character; who I suppose to have the high intelligence/ low conscientiousness traits that often go-with creativity, and maybe a touch of genius.      

But the main reason I like Yuzi, is that he is a master of that most difficult and entrancing of cricketing crafts: leg-break, wrist-spin bowling. 

Yuzi has such command of varieties of pace, length and line - plus direction and degree of spin; that he is able to bowl six different deliveries per Over - the ball landing pretty-much where and how he wants. 

When he is bowling well (as at present); each of these deliveries is individually and psychologically-tailored to confuse or deceive the specific batsman Chahal is facing - a batsman who, in T20 cricket, is under constant pressure to score quickly. 

Thus cricket becomes a mind-game, the bowler striving to out-think and anticipate the batsman; and each Over a mini-drama of character - and a microcosm of Life.