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
The coach for the Kings XI Punjab IPL team, Tom Moody is facing the prospect of going into the tournament with a much depleted side, but he believes that the second edition of the IPL will be more competitive than the inaugural edition. He thinks the teams are evenly matched and that as of now there can be no clear favourite. Captain of the team Yuvraj Singh, though confident did express concerns about a possible deficit in the fast bowling department.
The IPL, due to begin on the 18 will be shorn of as many 7 Aussie players that have been picked for the upcoming international cricket series to be played in the UAE between Australia and Pakistan. The Kings XI Punjab team is probably the worst hit by the exodus of Aussie players and will sorely miss James Hopes and Shaun Marsh. The coach however did express the hope in the cricket news that pacer Brett Lee may yet be available for IPL2.
It isn’t just the Australian players the Punjab team will be missing; it is also West Indian Jerome Taylor who will be absent due injury in a car accident and Sreesanth who will be absent from the squad owing to a back injury that has put him out of action for quite a while now. Coach Moody made light of his troubles by saying it made his job easier not to have to deal with six international cricket players if they were not playing well.
The Punjab team does have consolation in the likes of recently acquired English player Ravi Bopara, Simon Katich who is reportedly in great form currently, and the Sri Lankan duo of Kumara Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. Another ray of hope for the team would be Yusuf Abdullah from South Africa who just debuted against the Aussies and made a very positive impact.
Though concerned for the pace department of his team, skipper Yuvraj Singh was upbeat about the rest of the team rising to the occasion. He was also happy about the large expat community of Indians in South Africa, particularly the Punjabi community settled there; who he was sure would come out to support his team. He was further hopeful that large numbers of fans would travel from India to South Africa to enjoy the spectacle of the IPL as well as to offer support to their respective teams.
Irfan Pathan, whose forte seems to be the T20 format in recent times is being seen as a key player due to his all round abilities. Having visited the country a couple of times before, he will be in a position to help out his teammates by offering tips and pointers about conditions there.
Source – cricket360.com
THE Kings XI Punjab lost to the Chennai Super Kings in last year’s second semifinal of the Indian Premier League by a massive nine wickets, after scoring a below-par 112/8 in their 20 overs.
They had an impressive 10 wins from their 14 pool games, the second best record in the tournament behind eventual winners the Rajasthan Royals with 11 from 14.
The team will be led by Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh, who will want to improve on his record in the tournament after scoring 299 runs in 14 innings at an average of just 23.
One of the finds of the tournament was left-handed Australian batsman Shaun Marsh, who scored 616 runs in his 11 innings — the top scorer in the competition — at an average of 68.44. He was also one of just six players to score a century in the inaugural IPL (115) .
The batting line- up also offers a host of experience and fire power in Sri Lankans Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene and Ramnaresh Sarwan from the West Indies.
In the bowling department, Indian fast bowlers Sree Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan will spearhead the attack with Kyle Mills of New Zealand and returning Australian paceman Brett Lee.
Australian Tom Moody will coach the side, which is owned by Bollywood actress Preity Zinta and renowned businessmen Ness Wadia, Mohit Burman and Karan Paul.
Source – thetimes.co.za
