IPL Bangalore Royal Challengers
When I first heard that Vijay Mallya has spent almost $112 million to own the Bangalore Royal Challengers team, I thought, here is a chance for Mallaya to redeem himself into picking up a better team than what he did for Force India. What followed thereafter was something that was very surprising, the team that Rahul Dravid – the icon player for Bangalore RCs – chose the team he did. It was a team full of class players, but most of them were batsmen who loved to play in the proverbial V, without too much propensity to loft the ball into the stands. This may haunt the team in the later stages, especially when the other teams find their feet and began to attack these batsmen more.
Look at the squad here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore_Royal_Challengers#Current_squad, and you should realize what I am talking about. Rahul Dravid, Wasim Jaffer, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Jacques Kallis and Anil Kumble are all legends of the games in their own right, but you would associate them with the longer form of the game, and expecting them to perform in this format of the game would probably be expecting a little too much.
Vijay Mallya obviously named his team Royal Challengers, because he owns the liquor brand Royal Challenge. Dravid, as mentioned earlier, is the icon player, which means he gets 15% more than the next costly guy, who turned out to be Jacques Kallis at $9,00,000. The red and golden yellow on Bangalore RC’s is because they are also the colours of the Karnataka state flag.
Bangalore Royal Challengers’ biggest strength, though, lies in their bowling. Anil Kumble’s experience is ably supported by the pace trio of Zaheer Khan, Dale Steyn and Praveen Kumar, and to back them up, Bangalore RC has Jacques Kallis, Abdur Razzaq and Vinay Kumar. Nathan Bracken had been picked up too, but an injury caused him to pull out at the eleventh hour. Bracken’s bowling would have been a huge asset in this form of the game, given that he bowls good changes of pace, and has economical figures to boot usually. Steyn and Kumble would not be available for the first couple of matches were different reasons – Steyn is playing first class cricket back home, while Kumble is still nursing his injury – but once they are back, this should the bowling lineup to look out for.
The biggest weakness for this team is what has been already mentioned, their batting lineup looks a little suspect to consistently tear the opposition bowling apart. Especially, if they open with the conventional pair of Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer – like they did in their first match against Kolkata Knight Riders. The other issue that can be seen is the number of foreign cricketers is ten, out of which, according to the IPL rules, only four can take field. This may be embarrassment of riches for Dravid, and would ensure that he needs to think a lot before making decisions regarding team selections.
