The cards have been dealt and it's time to start the game. As the IPL looks to find its feet in new settings, Sreeram Ramachandran looks at who has all the aces, and who's sitting on a house of cards
The cards have been dealt and it's time to start the game. As the IPL looks to find its feet in new settings, Sreeram Ramachandran looks at who has all the aces, and who's sitting on a house of cards
The Joker
Somewhere in the middle of all their excesses, the Bangalore Royal Challengers actually made a small, fantastic value-for-money purchase Jesse Ryder. If you look carefully, you'll see that Jesse didn't need his recent heroics against India to establish his credentials. He was already showing great T20 mettle he scores at a strike rate of 142 and has three 50s in domestic T20 cricket. He may be the real surprise package, and at a cheap price too what do they have to pay him? Five creamy pies and a few milkshakes?
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The King
Dhoni is undoubtedly the King of Indian cricket at this point. But as he sets off on his world domination tour, the kingdom back home remains unconquered. He has a long and varied attack that he will take to the field but that alone won't be enough. Footballers get very excited about terms like doubles and trebles. Dhoni will be eyeing his own double here to win the IPL and the T20 World Cup that follows immediately.
The Jack of all trades
We know by now that the Rajasthan Royals team management has X-ray vision, which allows them to look through big names and cut through the packaging straight to the substance. They built a whole championship-winning run out of hidden gems and they seem to be keen to do it again this time, an example being the purchase of Tyron Henderson.
A 'Tyron who?' reaction could backfire on you because he is a serious name down in South Africa and in Middlesex. He's got the complete package serious big hitting muscle in the lower-middle order (the Royals were clearly not happy with Yusuf Pathan's ratio of five lost balls per match), a wide array of slower, quicker, swinging, seaming deliveries and the fact that he isn't a major international name yet.
The Wild Card
The South African conditions are the sudden unknown quantity that has been brought into the equation. It is difficult to say how much it will affect things. On one level, it probably doesn't matter much u2014 all pitches across the world are slowly morphing into flat, run-rich wickets of zombie-like homogeneity. But at some level, factors such as familiarity, acclimatisation to the weather, ground conditions would play some role. So teams such as the Royal Challengers, who have several South Africans, may gain an advantage.
The Trump Card
Vijay Mallya's solution to most problems in life has been "let's try adding some pizzaz and style". And so when his team's cricketing fortunes floundered, he set out with a single-minded objective to grab the biggest, most glamourous cricketer money can buy. Kevin Pietersen has remained 'mostly harmless' in the T20 format long enough for us to chuck aside 'he's adapting to the format' and move on to 'is his game suited to the format?'
He's coming into the tournament after a wretched winter season with very little cricketing success of any kind.
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But for all his woes he remains a fantastic batsman, and he is the Bangalore Royal Challengers biggest trump card and their best bet to give their downwardly mobile state of affairs a massive upward thrust.
The Queen
Shilpa Shetty might not know exactly who from her team is a spinner and who the opener is. But one can assume she has a good idea of how strong the kingdom she has bought into is. Fitting perfectly into the stereotype of a queen, she is expected to stay away from all strategic and administrative matters, and can focus on adding the glamour and shine. At any rate, she's sitting on a team with renewed strength through some great new purchases.
Cards lost in the shuffle
Some key players have been overlooked, or have chosen to not play. Mitchell Johnson is arguably the world's best left arm seamer and a more than useful batsman. Brad Haddin, who has grown rapidly as a wicket-keeper batsman, and Shakib-Ul-Hasan, the Bangladeshi all-rounder who does everything you can ask of a cricketer (except modern requirements such as dancing, acting and so on), could have been obtained for cheap, but no one seemed to care much.
The Ace
It is difficult to clearly assess Chris Gayle's value as a T20 cricketer. But let's try. His international T20 batting strike rate is 161 at an average of 37, and his bowling average is 16, with an economy of 6.19. Yup, we are still talking about the same player. Suffice to say that he is rapidly emerging as T20's Gary Sobers, and his injury was the Kolkata Knight Riders' biggest loss last season. He is back for the first half of the tournament though, and is almost certain to make you reach for some Caribbean rum and coke to be able to handle it all.
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