As one counts down to the third season of the Indian Premier League, we preview the chances of the eight sides in a four-part series. In this part, we bring you the chances of Mumbai Indian and Deccan Chargers.
MUMBAI INDIANS:
Strengths:
The Mumbai Indians have never qualified for the semi-finals of the IPL before and will be looking to get there for the first time. Their biggest strength would be the hard-hitting batting of three of their top-order batsmen in Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya and the newly recruited, Kieron Pollard. If two, or even one of them get going and go the distance, the Mumbai Indians will be in very safe hands, and on Indian pitches, life would be much easier for these guys who like to hit through the line of the ball.
Weaknesses:
Their inability to finish off games is their biggest liability. In both the editions of the tournament so far, the Mumbai side has lost some really close games, and they will need to overcome that by showing a killer instinct that they are hitherto lacking. Tendulkar was never a great captain even while leading the Indian side, and under his captaincy, the Mumbai team hasn’t done too well either, thanks, mainly due to the hunger to close out the games. This needs to change or else it may see a change at the top as well.
Players to watch out for:
Pollard. He is hugely built, and can slam the ball a fair distance. He can bowl 3-4 overs as well, with his brand of medium pace helping captains in the middle overs, while he is one of the better fielders in the side.
DELHI DAREDEVILS:
Strengths:
When a team has such a balanced line-up like Delhi Daredevils, it is not a big surprise that the bookmakers have put them as favourites to win the tournament. The opening four batsmen, are by far, the most explosive in the format of the game and there is a reasonable chance that only three out of Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Dave Warner will make it to the playing eleven. Warner’s form in the KFC Big Bash and the few T20Is that he played for Australia will mean that it could be a tough decision to leave him out of the side. The bowling lies in the hands of Dirk Nannes, and the other Indians in Pradeep Sangwan and Ashish Nehra, all of whom are good, left-handed pace bowlers and with Daniel Vettori and Amit Mishra in the spin department, it looks like they will be a team to watch out for.
Weaknesses:
Not too many perceptible ones. But the lack of an all-rounder is probably one of them. Also, they have a new captain in Gautam Gambhir and that will mean that there will be a lot of pressure on him to perform – Delhi have been semi-finalists in the previous two editions of the tournament after all.
Players to watch out for:
The aforementioned four batsmen aside, the Daredevils will depend on their little known Indian players in Sarabjit Ladda, Kedar Jadhav and Joginder Singh.
Google Buys Live TV Rights to 2010 IPL
Google's Live Internet Video Streaming Website - YouTube, will have exclusive rights to play the 2010 Indian Premier League. Money will be made from advertising. This is fantastic news for people with fast broadband internet.
What do you think?
article by Robert Andrews
Google has confirmed yesterday’s reports - YouTube has inked rights from the big-money Indian Premier League’s (IPL) licensing partner Global Cricket Ventures to live-stream all 60 matches of the 45-day tournament, starting March 12.
It’s YouTube’s first deal to live-stream a big global sport - no mere domestic competition, IPL is the largest cricket tournament in the world, forecast to generate Read the rest of this entry...
- January 24, 2010
- article by Jimmy
- 0 comments
One would almost have thought that the Indians had invaded their neighbours. In the end, it was only a bunch of Pakistani cricketers not selected for the third edition of the IPL by the franchises that caused so much furore in the Pakistani parliament that there have been talks of boycotting anything and everything remotely Indian.
The potential embargo could involve cricket matches – which already do not exist – hockey games, which occur once in like a gazillion years, and even Bollywood films. Or at least that is what most voices that matter in Pakistan are suggesting. Phrases ranging from insult to the Pakistani cricket team to insult to the country as a whole have been doing the rounds, as some players have termed it as a ‘conspiracy against Pakistan as a whole which was being hatched for the last three or four months.’
Really now, while being hurt and disappointed at not been selected for one or other franchise for the IPL and not making that quick buck is only justified, the rest of the jamboree that seems to have followed is nothing short of over-reaction.
The critics from Pakistan have pointed fingers at everything plausible. The Indian Government, the IPL functioning committee and the franchises have all been blamed, and for someone observing it as a neutral, one cannot understand what the shenanigans are all about.
It is a private tournament, which like any other multi-national company in the world is not governed by what the government says. At best, it can consult the government and any decision that it has to take has to be its own prerogative, not the government’s. This was evident in the previous year’s IPL when the tournament had been shifted to South Africa despite the government asking them to postpone the whole tournament.
That leaves the IPL and the franchises, and one cannot see how a collective decision to exclude the Pakistanis would have benefited either one of them. In fact, the IPL committee would understand that the presence of Pakistani cricketers and the ensuing following of the game in that country would make for better revenues for the league. And one cannot see any real motive behind conspiring to deliberately do this after strategising for a definite period of times.
The hard and cold fact is that the performances of the teams depend on players who would be there through the entire duration of the tournament; players for whom the franchises did not have to worry too much about after having a lot on their plate already. So, if the visas of such players did not arrive on time because of the cold vibes existing between the two governments, then, it sure could have been an issue for the team unity; apart from adding to the unnecessary things to ponder about for the owners.
While it is easy to say that politics and sport should not be mixed, it is much more difficult to implement it. Gone are the days when cricketers or sportsmen could live in that cocoon of safety despite the existing threat to the world security; and in the prevailing scenario, it is only evident that the Pakistani cricketers touring India – or vice versa – would elicit an unnecessary security threat to those concerned.
The Indian Premier League is a good two months away, but there is already a little buzz around the player transfers and the forthcoming auctions. However, the biggest piece of news coming from the IPL camp is that out of the list of 97 players that had put in their names in the ‘probables’ hat for the auctions, the league has gotten one Chris Cairns out of the list.
And the reason? “For his alleged allegation as we have zero tolerance for this kind of stuff,” as put by succinctly by Lalit Modi. The more interesting bit here is that allegations against the Kiwi all-rounder had come during the unsanctioned, and a rival to the IPL, Indian Cricket League.
Make no mistake, the BCCI must be lauded for not using a line like, “ICL is an unauthorised league and hence, we do not take match-fixing in that league as authentic enough.” After all, fixing a match, is a cricketing crime by itself and whether or not the tournament is authorised should not be a deciding factor here.
However, I have another problem with this decision. And that has to do with the fact that as far as the reports, there was an allegation of match-fixing, which was neither proved, nor proclaimed in the media. The official reason for his ouster from the league then, had been that he had hidden an injury, and continued playing in the league. So, isn’t this a case of using the yardstick of being guilty till proved innocent?
And if at all Cairns – or anyone else – had actually been involved in match-fixing during the Indian Cricket League, it is a mighty surprise that it has not yet come out in the public. Nothing more than rumours have so far! Let’s hope there is more coming our way from this story so that there is a clarity regarding what actually happened for the stakeholders of the game.
Apart from the Cairns saga, the IPL transfer window opened to a very lukewarm response. Till date, not too many transactions have taken place; Owais Shah (originally from Delhi) has been exchanged with Moises Henriques (from Kolkata) whereas Manoj Tiwari, also from Delhi earlier was taken up by Kolkata. While the Tiwari buy-out makes sense given that he is originally from Bengal and will help in building up the brand for the Knight Riders, what is surprising from Kolkata’s point of view is the Henriques was allowed to go for another foreign player.
For one, Henriques is the captain of the New South Wales Blues T20 side in their KFC Big Bash back home, which was very evident in the manner he performed with both, the bat and the ball during the Champions League T20. His all-round skills would have been of utmost utility in the tournament, and one would have almost seen a clamour for buying him out at the auctions. One almost feels that the management has missed out on a trick or two here.
Secondly, one could have understood if the exchange would have taken place in order to free up a slot for the foreign player. In this case, it is a foreign player that has been chosen for Henriques, which means that the Knight Riders will be left with no freed space for anyone extra from the auctions either.
Mohammad Yousuf must be a changed man. There cannot be any other way to describe him otherwise. For a cricketer who quit Pakistani cricket in a huff to join the rebel Indian Cricket League T20, then had events flipping and flopping between the two extremes of being a Pakistani international cricketer to being christened a pariah to their cricket, to being selected as the captain of the side, his recent worry on how Pakistani cricket was suffering due to the excesses of T20 makes him go a long way in their cricket.
Probably Yousuf does understand that if anything, his T20 career is all but finished. It was done and dusted even before the teams went to South Africa for the 2007 edition of the ICC World T20, when the selectors had refused to select him in the squad. Mind you, his international career had been on a relative high at that moment, but the wise men clearly saw what he hadn’t; the format needed someone with the penchant to field better than he ever did, and run between the wickets in a manner that Yousuf would have probably never imagined in his life. So, almost three years after that fateful unacceptability of change, the batsman seems to have reconciled to his fate and realised that the likes of ICC World T20 and IPL may not be his cuppa coffee anymore. Especially after not a single team wanted to bid for him during the IPL auctions and then, with the deteriorating Indo-Pak relations over the last one year or so.
It is no surprise then, that the Pakistani captain is all of a sudden worried about the future of Pakistani cricket in relation with the T20 cricket. However, and I understand this is only conjecture – and a far-fetched one at that – I would like to see what Yousuf does if he does have the fortune of being selected by one of the franchises in any of the forthcoming IPLs. Sachin Tendulkar has retired from T20 cricket, and so has Ricky Ponting. Will Yousuf reject the contract to set a benchmark and for the betterment of his nation’s international performance? Only time can tell!
Talking of Yousuf and the country that he is touring currently – Australia – the KFC T20 Big Bash got underway this week. The first round of matches saw Queensland take on Victoria, Western Australia play South Australia and Tasmania feature against New South Wales. The incentive is there for all the teams to grab; a chance to represent their side in the Champions League T20 for a multi-million dollar prize money!
New Zealand international cricketer Ross Taylor had been picked up by Victoria in place of Sohail Tanvir and he immediately stuck gold with a 36-ball 58 and took the previous year’s runner-up to 157/8 in their 20 overs after having slumped to 5/3 at one stage. Andrew Symonds’ return lasted all of 14 balls in which he scored 16, but with 37 needed off the last four overs and with four wickets remaining, it could have been anybody’s game. Rain intervened, and the Bulls were fund four runs short of the target.
South Australia then had their international stars, Keiron Pollard and Shahid Afridi, win their first game against Western Australia. First, Pollard spanked a 31-ball 45, and then Afridi ran through the WA innings with a 4/19 in his four overs.
In the third game, Dave Warner of the NSW Blues smacked the quickest fifty ever in the competition off 18 balls, and despite a strong start by Tim Paine – 48 off 18 – the rest of the Tasmanians collapsed to 163 all out to hand the opposition over a 32-run win.
Finally makes peace between N. Srinivasan and Lalit Modi
There are two cricketing rivalries which have stood the tests of time, an Australia-England one that plays for the Ashes, and an India-Pakistan one that plays for everything and cricket! However, if ICC’s latest World T20 qualifiers are anything to go by, then, there could be another big one that could be added to the aforementioned list; something that could go on to assume colossal proportions in the years to come!
USA will be taking on Afghanistan in the Middle East in February, as a part of the qualifiers for the ICC World T20 that will be played in the month of April next year. The tournament is an eight-nation tournament, with the top two from them going on to be the part of the main event in the West Indies in 2010 in April.
The ICC World T20 is a 12-nation tournament, and the top ten countries – all the test playing nations – have already gained automatic qualifications. Apart from these ten, the top six countries in the world, and two special invitees from the ICC are featuring in this qualifier. These include Afghanistan, Scotland, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands, UAE, USA and Canada. While the remaining six are direct qualifiers for these qualifiers, USA and UAE have been doled out special invites. USA and Afghanistan have a political history going on for the last decade or so, and this match could spark off a new cricketing rivalry in the future.
Group A consists of Ireland and Scotland apart from these two, whereas Group B has Kenya, Netherlands, Canada and UAE. The top two from each group will then join a Super Fours group where each team will play the others once – except the team qualified from their own group – and the top two will not only qualify for the finals but also for the ICC World T20 – the T20 equivalent of the World Cup.
Back in India with the Indian Premier League, the BCCI has finally ended all speculations about the future of Lalit Modi as the chief of the tournament. He has been assigned the job since 2012, after it had been claimed in the media that he had lost his job. It was a long-standing feud between Modi and the secretary of the cricket board, N. Srinivasan that had led to these speculations, but the President of the Board, Shashank Manohar has laid all this to rest.
While the ego battle – or whatever else can be used to describe it – is definitely something for the Board members to rectify internally and move ahead, I wonder whether there is any ‘Succession Plan’ in place in the eventuality that Modi does end his reign as the leader of the pack. Because, while handling the BCCI is one thing, it is quite a different and a more challenging issue to handle a tournament of the magnitude of IPL without someone with the desired expertise.
In the meantime, Modi has also announced that the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League which will be played in 2011, will have two extra teams. There will, thus, be ten sides, and 94 games in all, making it a really grand event. However, what will not be so grand will be the fact that every side will thus play a minimum of 18 games, and hence travel as much through the couple of months through the length and the breadth of the country. Fatigue and tiredness will be a concern for all the players, as will be injury issues and fitness woes. Whether the rule that the Indian players can play a maximum of 12 games will make too much of a difference will remain to be seen, but the increase in the matches will definitely have its effect on viewership as well, as the viewer-fatigue is as big an issue as its players’ counterpart.
So, will there be a rule regarding the maximum number of games a fan can watch as well? Now that would be an interesting call, won’t it?!
One of the best batsmen on display
As the cricket fans around the world brace themselves for the third season of the Indian Premier League, the little known Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament got underway last month in India. The league stage of the tournament ended with ten teams making it to the second stage. The second round of the tournament will be played next year from the 12th of March – coincidentally, the same day as the third edition of the Indian Premier League!
The Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament is an inter-state, domestic T20 tournament in India. The first season was supposed to happen last season, but did not take off due to the lack of dates in the calendar! The format of the trophy is based on that of the Ranji trophy, where teams from every zone in the country – North, East, West, South and Central – play against sides from their own zone. The top two sides from every zone at the end of the round robin qualify for the second stage with six of the those ten getting a bye into the quarter-finals, while the remaining four fighting it out in the pre-quarter-final knock-out.
The biggest news of the tournament came in the form of Rajasthan not being allowed to play in the tournament because of the issues within the state association. This meant that the Central Zone had only four sides vying for the two slots for the next round. Madhya Pradesh won all their three games, while Railways won two of theirs to qualify for the next round.
Both North Zone and South Zone were expected to be the toughest groups given that each of them had six teams each. This would have made qualification for the two sides even more difficult. As it turned out, the South Zone games were badly hit by rain as nine out of the 15 were declared no-result. Amidst this, Tamil Nadu won the two games it managed to play – with three abandoned – against lowly Kerala and Goa, while Hyderabad needed only one. The Hyderabad side had four of its matches rained off and still managed to get through to the next round! The only match it won had Ambati Rayadu score a half century – a joyous moment for the ICL-return youngster. Karnataka shot itself in the foot as they lost to Goa, thanks to Swapnil Asnodkar’s 48-ball 71 and lost out on the second round.
The North Zone was keenly fought. Going into the last round of games, there were four teams which had the chance of making it to the next round; Punjab (12 points before the last game), Himachal Pradesh (12), Haryana (8), Jammu and Kashmir (4), Delhi (12), Services (0). Despite playing the bottom placed side, Delhi was stretched to the limit by Services, before winning by eight runs and going through. Himachal Pradesh then beat Punjab to get to 16 points as well and snuffed out any chances that Haryana could have had by beating J&K.
The East Zone was the closest of the lot. Three teams, Jharkhand, Assam and Orissa ended with three wins each – out of the four games played. Amongst themselves as well, Assam beat Orissa, Orissa overcame Jharkhand, whereas Jharkhand outplayed Assam! Unfortunately for the Oriyans, they finished third in the group, thanks to a lesser net run rate than the other two. In fact, they fell short of Assam’s NRR by 0.1! Saurabh Tiwary was the captain of the Jharkhand T20 side, and so impressed were the selectors with his leadership skills, that he has also been appointed as the skipper of the side for the longer format of the game – the Ranji trophy.
In the West Zone, Wasim Jaffer’s strong display with the bat ensured that Mumbai ran away to three wins in as many games before losing to Maharashtra. By that time, though, they had already qualified for the second round, while Maharashtra followed soon after with wins over Mumbai and Baroda.
Assam will now play Railways and Jharkhand will take on Himachal Pradesh in the pre-quarters, with the respective winners taking on Delhi and Tamil Nadu in the quarter finals. The other two quarter finals will have Hyderabad face Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh play Maharashtra.
- November 4, 2009
- article by Suneer Chowdhary
- 1 comments
Main Points
- The 12 teams will initially be divided into four groups of three teams each.
- Top two teams from each Group will qualify for a four team League pool
- The top two teams from each League pool will qualify for the Semi-Finals in Delhi and Hyderabad
- The Champions League Twenty20 will involve a total of 23 matches spread over 16 days.
- The Grand Final to be played in Hyderabad on October 23
- Any more questions please visit the CLT20 FAQ
CLT20 Initial Groupings
|
GROUP A
|
GROUP B
|
GROUP C
|
GROUP D
|
| A1
Deccan Chargers
(India) |
B1
NSW Blues
(Australia) |
C1
Royal Challengers Bangalore
(India) |
D1
Delhi Daredevils
(India) |
| A2
ECB2 [TBD] |
B2
Diamond Eagles
(South Africa) |
C2
Cape Cobras
(South Africa) |
D2
Victorian Bushrangers
(Australia) |
| A3
Trinidad & Tobago
(West Indies) |
B3
ECB1 [TBD] |
C3
Otago Volts
(New Zealand) |
D3
Wayamba
(Sri Lanka) |
CLT20 Starting Time?
8pm on October 8, 2009.
- September 14, 2009
- article by JM
- 1 comments
Ricky to Retire from T20I
Ricky Ponting has announced his retirement from international Twenty20 cricket. However, he will continue to lead the Australian side in the ODIs and Test matches. He has also said that he will continue playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL.
Ponting has taken this decision to prolong his test match and ODI career, and has seemed to gone in a direction opposite to what most cricketers have been going; that is, to retire from the longer format to concentrate on the T20Is and get the riches in.
The decision was conveyed to the chief selector, coach and the current vice-captain, Michael Clarke, who will now take over the reigns of the T20I side. Clarke had captained the T20I side in Ponting’s absence, and currently is also leading the Aussie team in the ODIs as Ponting is back in Australia, resting. However, a formal decision in that regard has not been taken given that the Aussies next play another T20I in February next year only.
Recently, Australia had lost their Ashes series to England, and Ponting had expressed his desire to come back to England and win a test series here. However, the next series in the country will only be in 2013, which makes it difficult for the dream to become reality.
Compare prices to buy the Ricky Ponting bat cheap at T20SHOP
Cool Ricky Ponting Wallpaper
640 x 480
1024 x 768
1280 x 1024
Get 15 more Ricky Wallpapers
The IPL has asked its franchises to directly deal with the concerned players instead of going through the player agents. This new rule has been brought about because the IPL had received many complaints about agents promising many cricketers from the various countries in the world about an IPL berth.
Another reason that experts put forward is the fact that many of the ICL players have rejoined the main fold and this has caused many contracts to be negotiated between these players’ agents and the franchise. The BCCI had set a limit of Rs.8-20 lakh for these ICL players, but it has been said that the rule may have been violated.
There have been complaints to the effect of the agents signing up upcoming cricketers for the IPL, but not in the prescribed format of the contract which has been specified by the IPL. The IPL has now asked the franchises to re-register all the players’ contracts and also make it known to the governing council of all their signings in the recent times, by the 25th of August.
The IPL has then said that they “will then update the player registry and publish a finalised list of registered players with the league on August 27”
640 x 480
1024 x 768
1280 x 1024