Some pertinent observations from yesterday's game between Mohali and Mumbai

• The new Mohali outfit (supposedly designed by Provogue) is a rip-off of the Chennai SuperStars outfit. That garish pink and grey. Though, one must admit that the new outfit did help turn luck Mohali's way. And it's definitely much better than the old one
• They got their team ( Read more... )

Not only have they not won any games so far, the IPL team from Punjab lie at the bottom of the heap when it comes to the fair play rankings too.
Another case of cricket imitating life.

Mumbai Indians I mean. Their team selection so far has been inexplicable, and their tactics while bowling even more so ( Read more... )

I'm writing this in the innings break of the first IPL game between bangalore and calcutta. I've just witnessed what might have been one of the finest innings in limited overs cricket. Absolutely mindblowing stuff from McCullum. Yet, if at all I'm feeling something, it's irritation. Despite having watched such good cricket from this man, I feel ( Read more... )

Before I could re-assess and make new starting line-ups for the eight teams following the second IPL auction and recruitment of locals and youngsters, cricinfo has done it's own version. However, it seems like Bib had an extremely tough deadline to come up with this and most line-ups he has drawn up seem fairly random. Let me try compare what he ( Read more... )

Chennai have the same problem as Delhi - way too many foreigners, who, because of the rule, will have to warm the bench. Clearly, the four best foreigners are Hayden, Hussey, Oram and Murali, so they'll start. And L Balaji's lack of fitness, and Sreesanth going to Mohali, and Ntini's likely benching means that Chennai will go in without a real ( Read more... )

After a disastrous time trying to predict Bangalore, I seem to have done better in terms of Delhi. I seem to have got that mostly right. The article also talks of TM Srivastava, but I'd considered him and then left him out in favour of Shikhar Dhawan after I found Delhi has the requisite quota of youngsters.

Coming to Mohali now. Preity Zinta had ( Read more... )

I seem to have gotten the Bangalore analysis completely wrong. I'm told the following things, by various people

• Gaurav Dhiman seems to have lost it since the last last youth world cup, when he opened the bowling with R P Singh
• A reliable source tells me that Praveen Kumar has been signed for Bangalore. An excellent acquisition.
  
• Swapnil Asnodkar is ( Read more... )

Ok here's my take for the starting eleven of Bangalore Royal Challengers (eeks - what a seedy name)

Gaurav Dhiman
K B Pawan
Jacques Kallis
Shiv Chanderpaul
Rahul Dravid
Mark Boucher
Manish Pandey
Anil Kumble
Zaheer Khan
Nathan Bracken
N C Aiyappa

The bench will have Cameron White,  Wasim Jaffer,  Dale Steyn, K P Appanna and one more batsman (need not be ( Read more... )

In a post yesterday, I'd predicted that the teams would've met up beforehand in order to "cut the IPL melon" among themselves and not indulge in cut-throat competition at the bidding. Given what happened yesterday, it seems like somone broke this agreement and then everyone went mad ( Read more... )