India's IPL final choice: Dhoni or Shah Rukh?

It’s possibly in cricketing terms the biggest spectacle the game is likely to see.

That discounts even the T20 World Cup to be held later this year in Sri Lanka.

Click: Aamir's ‘Satyamev Jayate’ takes on Shah Rukh's KKR, IPL

But, a spectacle is what the BCCI and organisers of the Indian Premier League (IPL) unabashedly promise (note the fairground advertisement), and in those terms they have delivered.

When the Chennai Super Kings play the Kolkata Knight Riders in Chennai this evening it will bring to close a tumultuous season 5 for the tournament.

A more exotic line-up of villains could not have been scripted.

From Shah Rukh Khan the owner of the KKR, to IPL newbies caught in a match-fixing sting, to a hunky Australian player accused of molesting a foreign-born Indian woman.

Twitter did its part to stir the pot, with Siddharth Mallya, son of Vijay Mallya, owner of the Bangalore Royal Challengers feeling the biteback of some of his frank tweets.

And this is all off the field.

With over 720 sixes being hit on the field, the action was non-stop.

From a cricketing perspective, what the IPL has evolved into is a serious sporting franchise in and of itself.

The batsman, apart from some predictable unorthodox shots, found value in playing the classic cricketing strokes. And a straight six down the ground is a classic stroke.

The bowlers have turned into devious mischief makers, with more surprise deliveries than a magician at a kids party.

It will remain an eternal mystery as to why Delhi chose not to play Morne Morkel – the IPL’s highest wicket-taker in their semifinal versus Chennai.

But Morkel showed that true bowling class was not defined by the format of the game.

Which leaves us with Gautam Gambhir, captain of KKR, now having to outsmart M S Dhoni, captain of the Super Kings, to claim a first IPL championship for Kolkata.

In Chennai the fanatical support is clearly behind Dhoni and his men.

They have won it before and have made four out of five IPL finals.

The rest of India though, might be behind Shah Rukh Khan and his KKR.

There has been an underdog story to KKR, having been one of the highest-profile teams in the IPL from the get-go, but always getting hammered in the press.

This time their owner Shah Rukh deflected the attention away from them. He got himself banned from Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium after getting in to a fight with stadium staff and has pleaded guilty to smoking at an IPL match – a banned proposition at stadiums.

Which now means it probably is Dhoni and Chennai versus Shah Rukh and the rest of India.

Game on.

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