When the glitz and the glamour of the build-up to the Indian Premier League makes way for cricket action Saturday, past form will not count for much. Defending champions the Rajasthan Royals could find it tough this time around, starting with their opening clash against Bangalore Royal Challengers in the second match of a double header which gets the five-week, 2009 tournament underway.

Mumbai Indians meet Chennai Super Kings, who were runners-up last year, in the early match.

The relocation of the world’s richest cricket league from India to South Africa means that conditions will be different, with seam bowlers likely to get far more assistance than they did in the inaugural tournament in India last year.

The Royals had an early taste of the Newlands pitch in a warm-up match last weekend when batsmen struggled to play the sort of dominating innings that marked the first IPL.

It is a major blow for the champions will be without all-rounder Shane Watson and left-arm fast bowler Sohail Tanvir, two of the main match-winners for the underdogs who spent the least money on players but carried away the 1.2-million-dollar prize money.

The Royals, who will again be led by veteran Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne, will hope that Indian fast bowler Munaf Patel and South Africa’s Morne Morkel can compensate for the loss of the two stars.

In contrast to the Royals, the Challengers spent big but achieved little in the first IPL, finishing seventh of the eight teams.

They are likely to be an improved side, however, with star English signing Kevin Pietersen leading the team in the only stages of the tournament and tough South African Ray Jennings cracking the whip as coach.

The Bangalore team will be boosted by the signing of Indian batsman Robin Uthappa, while South African fast bowler Dale Steyn is likely to be more effective on his home country pitches than he was in India.

South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis and leading Indian batsman Rahul Dravid will be expected to improve on mediocre performances last time.

The battle between the Mumbai and Chennai franchises should get the tournament off to a cracking start.

Mumbai Indians will be led by Indian icon Sachin Tendulkar, who missed most of the first series because of injury.

Their squad had a pre-season training camp in South Africa under the direction of Shaun Pollock, appointed as team mentor, and fielding ace Jonty Rhodes.
Source – thenews.com.pk

Shane Warne’s midas touch to minnows Rajasthan Royals in the inaugural IPL season may be a part of cricketing folklore but a new book reveals that the Australian spin legend was not the original choice for captaincy.

In their book ‘IPL – an inside story’, Alam Srinivas and T R Vivek say Jaipur owner Manoj Badale was “saddled with Warne” by chance in the first players’ auction.

“In fact, Warne was never the over-riding original choice for the captaincy of the Jaipur team. Badale made it clear during an exclusive e-mail interview with us. ‘Warne’s views

could only be factored in after the first (players’) auction and it is clear given the choice of Graeme Smith, that we did not build a team around Warne. But rather we picked a team based on individual roles and records”.

The book gave an eyewitness version, by a franchise CEO, of the first auction where Jaipur just happened to buy Warne because no one else was buying him and the auction appeared to be in disaster.

“Warne’s was the first name that came up as the 78 players’ names were picked up. But no one was willing to pick him up at the reserve price. The auction was headed for disaster within the first few minutes.

“Since (Lalit) Modi has some interest in the Jaipur team he made an eye contact with Badale and Co. and nudged them to start bidding. Jaipur raised the placard… hoping other teams would jump into the fray… But no other team bid for Warne. Jaipur, it seemed, was saddle with Warne.”

The authors also wrote that the legendary spinner was “not a strategist” but someone who can just goad people to give 100 per cent on the field.

They said Warne was an “insecure” person who feels “compelled to be liked by others” and is greedy for praise.

“…It is his ability to earn respect and love of his teammates. Warne can goad people to give 100 per cent on the field,” the authors wrote.

“Excuse me, you would say, but isn’t that what captaincy is all about? Isn’t that how Ganguly and Ponting became great captains?… please read our words carefully. We never said that Warne is not a good leader. All we said was that he is not a strategist,” they argued.

“Even his trait to extract the best out of his players, to make them die rather than fail only proves it,” they added.

The book also attempted to justify their point with Warne’s coach Terry Jenner’s view on the bowler’s behaviour. “He (Jenner) could see something else too, behind the bravado, that many people missed, and this was the insecurity that is so obvious in Warne today. He desperately wanted people to like him, to praise him, to say how good he was,” the book quoted from Paul Barry’s biography on Warne.

“Warne will only listen to people that he thinks can help him go somewhere. He shies away from control, authority or demands for rational behaviour. In its extreme form this syndrome is a mental illness called narcissistic personality disorder; Warne appears to be suffering from milder version,” the book added from Warne’s biography.

The authors observed: “Therefore, throughout the IPL, one witnessed this twin emotions in Warne’s captaincy. He went out of his way to be loved by his teammates and rejected anything that did not fit his scheme of things.”
Source – cricket.expressindia.com

Kings XI Punjab failed to score 19 off the last over as they lost to Chevrolet Warriors by 10 runs in their warm-up T20 match.

Set a target of 152 to win, Kings XI Punjab could only manage 141 for six as they lost wickets at regular intervals at Sahara Oval St George’s Park.

Australian Simon Katich (12), Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara (16) and Englishman Ravi Bopara (24) all got starts before losing their wickets.

It was left to middle order batsman Taruwar Kohli to take the charge and he brought Kings XI close to the target with 19 runs needing off the last over off Warren Bell.

Kohli’s partner at the other end Karan Goel raised hopes for Kings XI when he smashed a straight six from the first ball of ultimate over to leave the equation at 13 off the remaining five deliveries.

However, destiny had other things in stored as Kohli was run out by wicketkeeper Davy Jacobs two balls later, and Bell was bang on his task, conceding only two singles in the remaining three deliveries to give see his side home.

Kohli made 36 runs off 26 deliveries which was studded with two fours and equal number of sixes.

For Chevrolet Warriors, pacer Bell was the most successful bowler, scalping the wickets of Katich and Bopara for 22 runs while Jon-Jon Smuts took the wicket of dangerous Sangakkara.

Earlier, VRV Singh picked four for 24 to restrict the Warriors to 151 for five after the South African side were asked to bat first with Colin Ingram hitting an unbeaten half century (57).

Shoddy fielding was the order of the day for Kings XI as they dropped as many as five catches.

The Warriors were quick to capitalise on the errors and Ingram played some delightful strokes en route his 57-run innings, although he was lucky to have survived after being bowled off a no-ball by Vikramjit Malik.

He faced 43 balls and stroked five fours and two sixes in his innings.
Source – espnstar.com

Black Caps allrounder Scott Styris admits he would rather be in India for the IPL which starts this weekend. The tournament was moved from India to South Africa for security reasons.

Styris lines up for the Deccan Chargers and says while he is enjoying the comforts of being in a first world country, the atmosphere is not as good. He says Indians love their cricket and during the tournament, a player is treated like a rock star.

The Deccan Chargers play the Kolkata Knight riders in their first match of the tournament in Cape Town on Sunday.
Source – home.nzcity.co.nz

The camaraderie and friendship that developed between players of different countries during the Indian Premier League may one day make the role of match referees redundant, feels Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan captain and one of the star performers for King’s XI Punjab.

“Hopefully, it will bring a day when the match referee is not needed to have a look at the games,” Sangakkara said on the eve of IPL 2, which gets under way in South Africa on Saturday.

In an interview with the ICC website, Sangakkara said that the greatest experience for him in the first edition of IPL, apart from playing some excellent cricket, was: “we’re also playing with and against not just your usual opponents but also with your own teammates”.

A top wicketkeeper-batsmen in world cricket today, Sangakkara has his erstwhile skipper Mahela Jayawardene as his teammate in IPL, while their team is skippered by India’s Yuvraj Singh.

Holding forth on a range of subjects including the Twenty20 World Cup in June, Sangakkara says he does not see the five-week-long IPL as an overkill of the game. “I think you always have to balance things out. If you don’t play the IPL then we [Sri Lanka] have no cricket and we’d just be training at the nets and doing all our preparation work – but there is nothing like match practice. So I think the players will be well prepared having played the IPL to go into the Twenty20 World Cup. The conditions, however, will be different in England.”

On the issue of too-much-cricket debate, Sangakkara felt that it was not going to change in near future. “It’s going to be a very hard workload especially for bowlers, but it gives countries ideal opportunities to test their bench strength where they can rotate players and make sure that the best XI is always in the best physical and mental shape – and at the same time give exposure to the fringe players who need the opportunity and exposure to show everyone what they can do and try to break into the national side.”
Source – gulfnews.com