IPL Deccan Chargers
The verdict for the Deccan Chargers was unanimous before the tournament; they were quite simply the pre-tournament favourites. And why not? With a reasonably strong bowling line up, and a overtly powerful batting one, it would be hard to imagine Deccan Chargers not make it to the semi-finals, if not go all the way to be crowned as the first ever winners of the Indian Premier League.
However, before getting into the on-field attributes, Deccan Chargers is a franchise for the city of Hyderabad, owned by the media house, Deccan Chronicle. Deccan Chronicle bought the rights from IPL for $107 million, out of which 20% of the stake was picked up by Group M. Indian fielding coach, Robin Singh is the coach of the team; Kanwaljit Singh is the Assistant coach, and the ex-Mumbai Ranji opener Shishir Hattangadi is the manager.
VVS Laxman was supposed to be the icon player for the team, but he backed out in order to allow his owners to buy more players for the team with maximum allocated kitty. A very sensible and a selfless gesture that. As expected, the team is being led by VVS Laxman himself, and they have a long and strong batting lineup following him. Amongst the foreigners, there is a Hershelle Gibbs, Chamara Silva, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi and Scott Styris to bat them out of trouble, where as amongst Indians, there is class in Rohit Sharma, experience in Venugopal Rao, and youth in Ravi Teja and P. Vijaykumar. The bowling line up may not be as strong, but there is enough in it to not to be written off by any opposition team, with the main bowlers being Chaminda Vaas and R.P. Singh, followed by Pragyan Ojha and the rest of all rounders mentioned above.
Chargers’ biggest strength is no doubt their batting. With a lineup that boasts of so may T20 experts, batsmen ranging from being hard hitters of the ball to great timers of the ball, tonkers of ball to batsmen who can find the gaps in the outfield with relative ease, the lineup has it all, and so huge totals should be something that the Deccan Chargers should achieve with ease.
One the other hand, the specialist bowlers like Vaas and RP Singh are ably supported by the part bowlers – and good ones at that – like Symmo and Afridi, an with a wicket keeper like Gilchrist in the side, the balance of the side is worth its weight in gold.
Where Laxman and his support staff may have a little issue is with choosing the four foreign players amongst the eight that are in the team. To add to that there are many of the Indians who are not really tested at the highest level or even at the first class level are not too experienced. This may be a sort of a hindrance for the team, but over all this does seem to be a team that has the ability to go right through in the tournament.
