Termed as the world’s best opening pair in the current times, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag were ready for the IPL action in South Africa starting from the 18th of April.

Gambhir said that the IPL would be an ideal platform to gain quality T20 experience before the start of the Twenty20 World cup scheduled in England.

“It’s a blessing in disguise for us to play IPL in South Africa before the Twenty20 World Cup. We hardly get to play Twenty20 matches. But to get the chance to play 14 to 15 games in IPL against world class players will definitely help us in our preparations for defending the crown,” the stocky left hander mentioned.

Gambhir has had a dream series against New Zealand and would look forward to continue his good form going into the second season of the IPL. Gambhir laid emphasis on the fact that success in international cricket mainly depended on the security of the player’s position in the team.

Gambhir’s opening partner Sehwag, spoke about the condition of pitches in South Africa and the help it offered to the pacers. “Pacers will undoubtedly have an edge in South Africa because of pace and bounce but that’s good for batters too as they can play their shots on such conditions,” the Delhi dasher said, while speaking to newspaper reporters during a send off event organized for the Daredevils team.

Sehwag also mentioned that the Delhi crowd would be missed by him and his team during the IPL 2009. “We will miss Delhi crowd in South Africa but hopefully, there will be sufficient support for us in South Africa,” he said.
Source – cricbuzz.com

The Delhi Daredevils won seven of their 14 games last year in the Indian Premier League before losing in the semifinals to the eventual winners, the Rajasthan Royals, by a massive margin of 105 runs.The Daredevils are captained by Indian batting supremo Virender Sehwag. The leading run-scorer for the Delhi side in last year’s inaugural event, and second overall, was Gautam Gambhir, who scored 534 runs in 14 games at an average of 41. Sehwag scored 406 runs in 14 games with a highest score of 94 not out.

The team also boasts stars such as South African batsman AB de Villiers, retired Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath, New Zealand left-arm spinner Daniel Vettori and exciting Australian newcomer David Warner, to name a few.

21-year-old Indian Yo Mahesh was the main destroyer with the ball for the Daredevils last year, taking 16 wickets in 11 matches at an average of 23.12.

Sri Lankan fast bowler Farveez Maharoof took 15 wickets in just 10 games at a superb average of 16.60.

The team is coached by Australian Greg Shipperd and is owned by the GMR Group.

Bollywood star Akshay Kumar is the brand ambassador of the Delhi Daredevils franchise.
Source – thetimes.co.za

Gautam Gambhir believes the upcoming Indian Premier League in South Africa will help India’s bid for glory at the Twenty20 World Cup.

Delhi Daredevils opener Gambhir, who was named man of the series on India’s tour of New Zealand, feels the IPL is the ideal preparation for the tournament in England in June.

“We hardly play Twenty20 matches so the IPL is really a blessing in disguise,” Gambhir said. “We will be playing 14 to 15 games in the IPL against world-class players, and that’s definitely going to help us in our preparations for the World Cup.”

Cape Town is readying for the biggest celebrity influx of the year as the off-field stars of the Indian Premier League (IPL) converge on the Mother City.

As a popular holiday destination and film-shoot location, Cape Town is no stranger to the rich and famous, but with the glamorous Twenty20 tournament due to start here Saturday, the city is set for a different sort of invasion.

The eight teams in the Indian competition are owned by some of the biggest Bollywood stars and richest people in the world, who will stay at Cape Town’s new five-star hotel, One and Only.

Officially opened by local hotelier Sol Kerzner just two weeks ago, One and Only was built with celebrities in mind, and extravagant rooms cost between 610 and 3,880 dollars per night in the low season.

The IPL task team are camped at the hotel as the tournament approaches, and confirmed that celebrities were expected to arrive from Tuesday.

“All the franchise owners, Shah Rukh Khan, Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta, the Ambanis, will arrive today,” organisers told AFP.

“The only exception is Bangalore owner Vijay Mallya, who will come next week as he first wants to watch his Formula One team, Force India, compete in the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.”

Khan is one of Bollywood’s biggest stars and owns the Kolkata Knight Riders, while Shetty is co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals and a former winner of Celebrity Big Brother.

Fellow actress Zinta is part-owner of the Kings XI Punjab franchise and will jet in from Port Elizabeth where she has been watching the team train and attending the fourth ODI between South Africa and Australia.

Business tycoon Dhirajlal Ambani is the head of the fourth-richest family in the world, and owns the Mumbai Indians through his conglomerate Reliance Industries.

If that weren’t enough, the various wives and girlfriends (WAGS) of the players due to compete in the IPL opening weekend will add extra sparkle around Cape Town.

England batsman Kevin Pietersen will return to his homeland Thursday with wife Jessica Taylor, a reality TV star who recently competed in the English show Dancing On Ice.

Bollywood actress Lakshmi Rai is expected to spend some time in Cape Town watching India’s heartthrob captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, with the duo rumoured to be dating.

Celebrity watchers will hope Andrew Symonds’ girlfriend Katie Johnson, recently voted Australia’s top WAG in an online poll, will add some Australian flavour by following his exploits with the Deccan Chargers.

And there’s the local contingent, with Jacques Kallis’ model partner Shamone Jardim and actress Jeanne Kietzmann, girlfriend of Dale Steyn, set to represent the host nation at gatherings set to dazzle South Africa’s fairest city.
Source – google.com

After a disastrous campaign last year, when Bangalore resembled a Test outfit and played and strategised in a similarly dreary manner, owner Vijay Mallya made a string of changes, recruiting the South African-born England batsman Kevin Pietersen for a record fee and installing him as captain in place of the conservative Rahul Dravid.
With the sudden relocation of this year’s Indian Premier League to South Africa, the Royal Challengers Bangalore stand to be one of the main beneficiaries with their bevy of Proteas and the South African-trained Pietersen. Not only will they be aided by their experience in the local conditions, the South Africans will also have a greater liking for the grounds. Both Jacques Kallis and Dale Steyn will enjoy the increased life in the surfaces, and the Proteas will be available for the entire series. Unfortunately for Mallya, Pietersen will only be available for the earlier part of the tournament before international duties intervene.

The South African coach Ray Jennings has used his local knowledge to engineer a coup by snapping up Roelof van der Merwe. A left arm orthodox spin bowling all rounder, van der Merwe recently made his international debut against Australia. He slotted into the lower middle order, and his heavy hitting and tight bowling palpably strengthened the Proteas, while his versatility greatly expanded his team’s strategic choices. In 44 List A matches, he averages 29.96 at a strike rate of 99.75 and has taken 75 wickets at 19.78 (ER 4.40). In 13 T20 matches, he averages 26.20 (SR 138.62) with the bat and 18.50 (ER 7.50, SR 14.7). It is quite a wonder that he was overlooked by Mickey Arthur and the South African selectors until a few weeks ago, and he will surely seize Cameron White’s position in the playing XI.

Zaheer Khan has been traded to Mumbai in return for batsman Robin Uthappa, but the loss in covered in part by the availability of the world’s No. 1 ranked ODI bowler Nathan Bracken for the second half of the season, after being absent for the entirety of last season. Ross Taylor returns for a full season, accompanied by Kiwi teammate and new signing Jesse Ryder, but with the cap on foreign players and the relative conservatism of most teams, both may spend a lot of their time watching from the sidelines, at least until the departure of Pietersen.
However, a large problem remains. Under the rules of the IPL, each team can only field four foreign players and the remaining seven must be Indians. Currently, Bangalore’s domestic cohort comprises 12 players: Wasim Jaffer, Rahul Dravid, Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Shreevats Goswami, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Balachandra Akhil, Pankaj Singh, Anil Kumble, Tinu Yohannan and R Vinay Kumar. While the leading teams usually have five or six players who have recently been in contention for Indian selection, Bangalore has only Kohli, Praveen and Uthappa, none of whom are established or regular internationals.

The remainder are of questionable or little value. Dravid will miss the upcoming season, ostensibly due to family reasons, while question marks remain over the other veterans. Despite his continued productivity on the domestic circuit, Jaffer has always struggled in the shorter formats and was continually tormented on the bouncier and livelier pitches of South Africa, England and Australia during his 2007 stint in the Test team. With Dravid on the outer, Jaffer’s chances of seeing action have risen and do not bode well for Bangalore. At the other end of batting order, Kumble has been out of action since a hand injury ended his Test career at the Feroz Shah Kotla. Grand warrior that he was, Kumble’s age was becoming apparent in 2008 and at times even the most persistent of players appeared to be depleted. Kumble was never an athlete and he may have even more difficulty coming to terms with the frenetic pace of the game than he did last year. He won’t be alone in that respect, as Bangalore boast one the oldest and the least agile Indian units in the competition. Uthappa and Kohli aside, the fielding is average and uninspiring, clearly the worst of the eight teams.

Bangalore can take heart from the promising form of Kohli in the last 12 months. Feted and touted as a future international start after leading India to the U-19 World Cup crown, Kohli struggled in last year’s IPL, scoring only 165 runs at 15.00. The selectors decided to fast track him into the ODI team in spite of this, and he rewarded them when he was given the opportunity to do so. Since then, he has scored a century against the Australians in Hyderabad and then topped the run scoring in the limited overs matches in the past Indian season, plundering four centuries to end with 682 runs at 75.77. Given his paltry returns last year, Kohli can only go up this time around. Also looking to press his claims for an international recall is Uthappa. After a bright start to his ODI career, Uthappa’s weaknesses were identified by opposition bowlers, and he became increasingly dependent on reverse sweeps and paddle scoops for his runs. Playing in South Africa will be a challenge to his technique, but it will be one that he has to overcome if he wants a recall to the T20 squad to defend the World Cup that he helped to win two years ago. Bangalore had the lowest run rate last season, and Uthappa and Kohli will need to fire if they are to have any chance of making the finals.
Source – livemint.com