Maybe I don’t fit into a particular demographic neatly enough, but I’ve struggled to find an IPL team to call my own. I’ve been to a few of the towns, which should be a good place to start, but it doesn’t seem to help. Maybe if they weren’t ‘franchises’ I might have a fighting chance. Franchises aren’t for supporting. No-one’s ever felt moved to buy a Domino’s Pizza uniform to show their allegiance.

Despite this, I’ve found a way to care about IPL matches. I don’t support a team, but I do support a group of players who all have something in common. I support Test cricketers.

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve found myself getting behind the big names; the guys who’ve made their reputations in the format that is still, for the minute, being described as the pinnacle of the game. So far, my boys have done pretty well.

The top-scorers have pretty much all been great Test cricketers: Adam Gilchrist, Gautam Gambhir, Jacques Kallis. Even Andrew Symonds is on my team, although I can’t say I’m massively happy about that. Bowlers are a lower caste in the religion that is Twenty20, but as I write, Chaminda Vaas is getting the better of the Chennai Super Kings top order and his Sri Lanka team-mate, Lasith Malinga, bowled the finest of final overs to get Mumbai Indians home against Rajasthan Royals on Saturday.

That match was perhaps most notable for the best innings of the tournament so far: Yusuf Pathan’s 37-ball hundred. Yusuf is yet to play a Test, but he’s brought his form with him from the longer form of the game. Pathan made 210 not out in the fourth innings of the Duleep Trophy final as West Zone made a staggering 541 to beat South Zone.

In the Mumbai vs Rajasthan match, Pathan’s heroics were in contrast to the efforts of a genuine Twenty20 specialist – Australia’s Shaun Tait. Tait’s jacked-in the longer formats and seems to struggle to get through a whole four overs. On his day, he’s dynamite, but on this occasion, he was a complete liability, bowling six wides and going for 11.5 an over. It’s all well and good specialising in the money format, but when you have a bad couple of overs in Twenty20, you don’t have much of a chance to put it right.

Alex Bowden writes on kingcricket.co.uk as well as for Cricinfo’s Page 2