Monday, February 25, 2008

Royal Challenge

Some quick thoughts on Bangalore Royal Challengers.

1. If this was a first class premier league and not a T20 one, Bangalore would have begun as outright favorites.

2. The name "Bangalore Royal Challengers" is pretty shady. I'm glad they didn't call it "Bengaluru Royal Challengers", which sounds shadier.

3. Bangalore did reasonably well to buy 6 foreigners and no more as opposed to the big spenders who went with 7 or 8, and almost seemed to forget the 'not more than 4 foreigners in the starting 11' rule while bidding. Of course, this means that Chanderpaul and Cameron White will still be spending a lot of time warming that bench.

4. To bring a footballing analogy into this (Damn, I seem to do a lot of this), I think Bangalore Royal Challengers will begin the IPL like Liverpool in the EPL. Lots of talent but will eventually falter to the "big" 3.

5. Bangalore Royal Challengers will arguably boast the best bowling line-up in the IPL- assuming of course that the usual starting line-up is Zaheer Khan, Kumble, Steyn, Bracken, Praveen Kumar.

6. The batting on the other hand, while being stodgy, is not exactly what I'd call swashbuckling. I worry for Bangalore Royal Challengers in all those big run chases.

7. Skimpy does a detailed job of analyzing possible starting elevens for all teams. In addition, I think Dravid will bat in the top 3. I don't see the point in him batting anywhere lower for a T20.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

great bowling
steady batting with excellent technique

they'll dig up the pitch at the chinnaswamy

acshully they dont' need to do that - they can just use teh same pitch that they played on on the 5th day of the pakistan test

and chappar, chuck the maldini fundaes and change back teh name of the blog ot "monkesh patrike"

Atulya said...

are.

PS: What Maldini fundaes ? That was Agatha Chrisite (sports mock innocent look).

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