Sadly the final match of the qualifying stage of the 2014 Champions League T20 tournament, which takes place on Tuesday at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore between the Barbados Tridents from the West Indies and the Northern Knights from New Zealand, is likely to take place in front of a pitifully small crowd.
Attendances for matches not involving an Indian side have been disappointingly sparse, although in some ways that is understandable. What is more, the match on Tuesday will have absolutely nothing riding on it, with both teams already eliminated from the competition.
Probably, for the Knights from New Zealand, the real challenge was to make it into the main draw, having to negotiate a qualifying group that included the reigning champions the Mumbai Indians. That they did so, topping the group, and defeating Mumbai in the final fixture, which actually ended the reign of the IPL side, deserves much credit.
However, having started their challenge in the competition proper with a solid win against the Cobras on the Duckworth-Lewis method, they have found the Hobart Hurricanes and the Kings XI Punjab far too strong for them. Although in fact, so have the other sides in Group B.
The Tridents arrived in India, already qualified for the main draw, but without a number of their leading players, when skipper Kieron Kieron opted to represent Mumbai Indians, Dwayne Smith chose to play for Chennai Super Kings and Shoaib Malik decided to represent the Hobart Hurricanes.
It isn’t really of any surprise that these two sides are meeting in a dead rubber. The two big guns of the group, Kings XI and the Hurricanes have dominated from the start of the tournament, and have duly secured the two available semi-final places, as expected and predicted by most supporters and pundits.