A season played in two countries
The fourteenth IPL began on 9 April 2021 at Chepauk with empty stands and a strange sort of neutrality. Six venues had been chosen so that no team would play at its own ground, and the whole thing ran on chartered flights and sealed hotel floors. Harshal Patel took 5 for 27 on the opening night and Royal Challengers Bangalore chased down Mumbai's 159 with two balls to spare. For four weeks it looked like a normal season. Delhi Capitals were winning, Chennai Super Kings had rebuilt after a wretched 2020, and Ruturaj Gaikwad was quietly turning into the opener CSK had been looking for since Hussey.
Outside the bubble, the second wave was tearing through the country. On 4 May the BCCI suspended the tournament indefinitely. Cases had turned up inside the bio-bubbles of more than one team. Thirty-one of the sixty matches were still unplayed. The decision, when it came, felt overdue rather than sudden, and the immediate problem was not the trophy but getting several hundred foreign players home.
Sharjah again
The BCCI announced on 29 May that the rest would be played in the United Arab Emirates. Cricket restarted on 19 September in Dubai, five months and fifteen days after it had stopped. The break rearranged the season completely. Kolkata Knight Riders had won two of their seven matches in India and looked finished. In the UAE they won five of seven, largely because Venkatesh Iyer walked in at the top of the order and started hitting the new ball, and Sunil Narine remembered how to bowl. They squeezed into fourth on net run rate.
Chennai went the other way and got better. Gaikwad scored 635 runs and took the Orange Cap. Harshal Patel finished with 32 wickets, a Purple Cap and the Most Valuable Player award for a Bangalore side that once again could not get past the Eliminator, where Narine's 4 for 21 ended them.
The night in Dubai
The final on 15 October was, in the end, one-sided. Eoin Morgan put Chennai in. Faf du Plessis made 86 off 59, Robin Uthappa hit 31 off 15 against his old team, Moeen Ali finished on 37 off 20, and 192 for 3 was more than enough. Kolkata needed 193 and got to 165 for 9. Shardul Thakur took 3 for 38. MS Dhoni, who a year earlier had been asked whether he was finished, lifted a fourth IPL trophy.
What it left behind
Two things. First, the UAE became the IPL's permanent insurance policy. It had hosted the whole of 2020 and half of 2021, and the three grounds in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah are now what the BCCI reaches for whenever India becomes unworkable. Second, the season proved that a bio-bubble is not a guarantee. Every tournament since has been planned with the assumption that it might have to move.
There is also a smaller thing worth remembering. This was the last eight-team IPL. From 2022 the league grew to ten, the auction was torn up, and squads that had been together for years were broken apart. The 2021 season is the last one that looks like the old league.