Sangakkara's leadership faces IPL challenge

Not only is Lalit Modi prepared to take on the dishevelled band of terrorists. On a day when Sri Lanka remembered the Lahore attack of a year ago, Muttiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakkara have urged fellow countrymen to turn up to this year's Indian Premier League.

While Sri Lanka Cricket made no comment on remembering the events that shook the game 12 months ago, and Colombo's daily English newspapers remained silent on the issue, the local members of the IPL teams have been putting the finishing touches to their preparations for the big bash in India. This is in a domestic tournament of dubious quality.

Sangakkara, as an example, has described the challenge ahead as an intriguing one as he takes over leadership of the Kings XI Punjab from Yuvraj Singh, who is expected to miss the first part of the IPL programme.

One of the things you learn about captaincy is that too many people are too quick to criticise and as often, too quick to make judgements. Since he has taken over as Sri Lanka's captain, Sangakkara knows all too well the 'wall to wall effort' needed to make a success of the team's performances as the game is, in a sense, a level below that of international cricket. Yet it makes as many demands, selection policies and a variety of strategies to fit the demands; for this you need the right team combination for a particular game as well as limit the opposition's hitting power.

It is all about thinking, on your feet two or three balls ahead of the game, which is unlike Tests or the longer slogs, where it is usually a couple of overs as strategies often change depending on what fast and slow bowling combinations are used.

As Daniel Vettori pointed out in an interview in Sri Lanka last year before the T20 series with the locals, the Twenty20 formula allows you less time to think and work out what the batsmen are thinking and place your field the way you think he is going to attempt to play his shots. But captains and bowlers soon get the idea of what strategy they can use. Sri Lanka, as an example, in their 2-0 loss to New Zealand applied the wrong strategies. This was not so much the captain's fault as the Sri Lanka batting planning didn't work a plan to marginalise the Kiwi bowling and fielding plans.

When the announcement was made that Yuvraj was being replaced by Sangakkara, the impression is that the Kings XI hierarchy wanted an international captain running affairs of the team on and off the field and to be more intimately involved. It is unfortunate how the wording of the media release had all the 'pretty words in the right place'. Just the sort of document that diplomats would nod with approval but and the cynics question such fancy vernacular; no one wanted to step on toes or egos.

You can almost see Preity Zinta's hand in the wording of the communiqué. The Bollywood star is not one to be pushed around either and is said to be a hardnosed business woman. She was often a calming influence when the IPL was in South Africa last year and Modi and his cronies were offering their typical faux smiles. It wasn't only the glitz, glamour or beguiling smile that worked for Ms Zinta and won over so many South Africans, and not just the Asians, but her style as well. There was a lot of praise for how she handled many tricky situations.