IPL Delhi DareDevils
If there was ever an Indian Premier League side that is very reminiscent of their corresponding Ranji team, it has to be the Delhi DareDevils squad. With seven cricketers from the Delhi Ranji team playing for this squad it is a great start for the marketing and promotion team of the squad. And that is because the cricket watching audience would then be able to relate to ‘their’ side, like no other club. The side is led by none other than Virender Sehwag, who is also the icon player and has helped him earn almost an eight and a half lakh dollars. The next costliest player for the Delhi team is Gautam Gambhir at $7.25 lakhs.
The team is owned by the GMR Holding who bought the team rights for $84 million from BCCI. The matches would be obviously played at the newly renovated, Ferozshah Kotla Stadium which has newly installed lights in there. The coach is a little known Aussie, Greg Shipperd, where as the glamour quotient is added by the Bollywood actor, Akshay Kumar.
Apart from Sehwag, it has no real big names, but all batsmen of good, solid quality. There is a Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, Daniel Vettori, Shoaib Malik and some of the cricketers from Delhi like Shikhar Dhawan. Dhawan has been one of the better finds for the Delhi team in the last Ranji season, and his scoring capabilities have helped the Delhi team in the past. Gambhir’s run of form in the smallest version of the game is very well chronicled, while the rest of them can all use the long handle with relative ease.
However, where the Delhi team may score over a lot of other teams is their bowling attack. With miserly bowlers like Glen McGrath and Mohammad Asif to open the bowling attack, it would be next to impossible for the opposition batsmen to score too many runs in the first few overs. Add a little dewy condition for a night encounter, the seam wobbles around a bit, and it is almost impossible for the batsmen to get any momentum going for them. Next up, there is a talented left handed medium pacer in Pradeep Sangwan – also from Delhi – and a class spinner by the name of Daniel Vettori.
Their strength is, however, their weakness too. With no big names in the batting except Virender Sehwag, and Sehwag’s penchant for playing a T20 match like it is a six over match, an early loss of wicket could spell a little trouble for the team. Again, apart from Sehwag, there are no real ‘tonkers’ of the cricket ball, which means that the Delhi team lacks in batsmen who can send the ball soaring over the fence off fast bowlers.
All in all, the Delhi DareDevils team seems to be a reasonably strong team, with a very good chance of making it to the knockout stage. And if it is Sehwag’s day during the knockout rounds, one never knows about the results. A definite team to watch out for!
