IPL 2010 was special in so many ways. It was the first time that two of the heavyweights of the tournament Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians made it to the final and Chennai Super Kings managed to beat Mumbai to lift the first of their three titles.
The tournament was dominated by Mumbai right through and CSK had finished the preliminary round at no. 3 with just 7 wins out of 14 games, but CSK eventually managed to edge past Mumbai with a complete all-round performance on the night of the final.
Here is the best XI of IPL 2010 –
Openers (Sachin Tendulkar, Murali Vijay)
Sachin Tendulkar won the orange cap in IPL 2010 by scoring 618 runs in 15 games. It was the first time ever that an Indian batsman won the orange cap. In the previous two editions of the IPL, it had gone to the two Aussies, Shaun Marsh and Matthew Hayden.
Murali Vijay was the most influential opener in IPL 2010 in terms of the strike rate. He batted with a very high strike rate at the top of the order for CSK and was still able to maintain incredible consistency.
Vijay was one of the only three players in the tournament who scored a hundred. The right-hander eventually finished with the runs’ tally of 458 runs in 15 games at an average of 35.23 and a strike rate of 156.84.
Middle order (Suresh Raina, Mahela Jayawardene, Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni)
Suresh Raina was the highest scorer for the champions CSK as he scored 520 runs in 16 games at a strike rate of over 140. He was the only CSK player who crossed the 500-run mark in IPL 2010.
The kind of role Raina played for CSK, Mahela Jayawardene did somewhat similar for Kings XI Punjab and his numbers were pretty similar to Raina as well.
However, the only difference between Raina and Jayawardene was that Jayawardene scored most of his runs playing along the round as opposed to Raina who hit a lot of sixes.
Rohit Sharma played the role of a finisher for Deccan Chargers and mostly batted at no. 5 and although he was struggling with his form in the international circuit, he put on consistent performances for the Chargers, scoring more than 400 runs with three half-centuries.
IPL 2010 was not one of the best IPLs for MS Dhoni in terms of his individual performances, but the CSK skipper still averaged more than 30 with the bat and played some impact knocks, guiding his team to positions of strength.
All-rounder (Irfan Pathan)
Irfan Pathan came into IPL 2010 after a bit of an injury lay-off, but he looked in wonderful rhythm with both bat and ball.
The southpaw was easily the best all-rounder in the tournament as he scored 276 runs in 15 games at a strike rate of close to 150 and got 15 wickets with the ball as well.
However, Irfan’s efforts were not enough to drive his team Kings XI Punjab into the playoffs as they finished at the bottom of the table with just 4 wins out of 14 games.
Bowlers (Amit Mishra, Zaheer Khan, Lasith Malinga, Pragyan Ojha)
Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra were the top two wicket-takers in IPL 2010. While Ojha got 21 wickets in the tournament, Mishra finished with a total of 17 wickets.
Ojha, however, played a couple of games more than Mishra as his team Deccan Chargers qualified for the playoffs.
Lasith Malinga and Zaheer Khan were not in top 5 in the wicket-taking chart, but both of them were among the most economical bowlers, giving away less than 8 runs an over on average.
It was because of Malinga and Zaheer that hardly any team was able to post a big score against Mumbai in the preliminary round of IPL 2010.
