Vivo Indian Premier League Twenty20 Cricket
Dear All,
This is that part of the year where in, all cricket lovers will be tuned into the biggest cricket entertainer, the Indian Premier League(IPL) Twenty20 cricket tournament.
As of yesterday, all the Indian Premier League(IPL) Tewnty20 teams teams have completed one match each and based on the initial matched completed, I thought of analyzing the teams and their performance.
We are just on day 4 of IPL and have already seen almost a dozen players either pulled out or still nursing the injury.
This season we have some exciting new players who will entertain the crowd along with seasoned campaigners. Some of the new hires are Lungi Ngidi, Tom Curran, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shubham Gill, Ishan Kishan, Evin Lewis, Mayank Markhande, Jofra Archer, Heinrich Klaasen and D'Arcy Short who will be joining some of the cricketers who made it big last year with players like Rashid Khan, Mohamad Nabi, Ben Stokes, Rahul Tripathi, Jasprit Bumrah, Pandya brothers Hardik and Kunal, Kuldeep Yadav, Sunil Narine, Chriss Lynn, Andre Russell and Suresh Raina along with our ever reliable captain Virat Kohli.
Here is team-wise analysis starting with one of the 2 returning teams, Chennai Super Kings.
1. Chennai Super Kings:
CSK has started off with a win over Mumbai Indians although it was made possible by the heroics of Dwayne Bravo in last couple of overs, Chennai have strengthened their ever strong team with the inclusions of Imran Tahir, Harbhajan Singh for spin department, Lungi Ngidi and Shardul Thakur as fast bowlers and allrounders Shane Watson and Kedar Jadhav unfortunately who is injured in first match and will be out of action of this IPL.
All in all, Chennai looks to make it to the playoffs like they did for most of the previous seasons.
2. Delhi Daredevils:
Delhi Daredevils have got the boost of Gautam Gambhir as their main batting mainstay at the top and have included the biggies Glen Maxwell, Colin Munro and Jason Roy to the batting department and Liam Plunkett to bowling, but they will be disappointed to lose Kagiso Rabada as he would have been more lethal bowling option for them.
Although some big international players are lined up for Delhi Daredevils, they mostly depend on local talents and it's their performance which has to lift the spirits of Delhi.
3. Kings XI Punjab:
The new look Kings XI Punjab is the team to watch out for in this IPL and possibly their best squad over the years to lift the trophy. With the inclusion of Mayank Agarwal, Aron Finch, Lokesh Rahul, Manoj Tiwari, Yuvraj Singh and of-course Chris Gayle, they have strengthened their batting which looks fearsome and the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin, Andrew Tye makes their bowling unit a decent one although their bowling may be a bit of concern if at all there are any injury scares as the tournament progresses.
Definitely Kings XI Punjab is the team to keep an eye this IPL and possibly the second team to make it to Playoffs.
4. Kolkata Knight Riders:
Kolkata Knight Riders although lost the services of Mithell Starc, but still boasts one of the best bowling units in this IPL with the players like Mitchell Johnson, Piyush Chawla, Kuldeep Yadav, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell along with Kamlesh Nagarkoti and Tom Curran.
Their batting mainstays will be Chris Lynn, Robin Uthappa, Dinesh Karthik, Nitish Rana and all-rounders Andre Russel and Sunil Narine. Sunil Narine especially have given them good starts and is a much improved pinch hitter.
KKR has the potential to make it to playoffs solely based on their bowling and hopefully their batters scores enough for their bowling unit to defend off.
5. Mumbai Indians:
Mumbai Indians have one of the best batting units among all IPL teams with skipper Rohit Sharma, explosive Windies batsman Evin Lewis, Ishan Kishan, Surya Kumar Yadav, Pandya brothers and Keiron Pollard boasts a threatening batting unit with the likes of J P Duminy and Saurabh Tiwari on the bench.
They have a balanced bowling unit in Jasprit Bumrah, Mitchell McClenaghan, Mustafizur Rahman and new spin sensation Mayank Markande along with the allround abilities of Pandya brothers and Keiron Pollard.
Although Mumbai is a slow starter, but they are tipped to be in play-off because of their balanced team.
6. Rajasthan Royals:
Rajasthan Royals is a bit weakened by reliable batsman and the designated captain Steve Smith, but still have players like Ajinkya Rahane, Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi, Ben Stokes, D'Arcy Short, Jos Buttler and explosive wicket keeper batsman Heinrich Klaasen in their ranks along with some of the local talents like K Gowtham and Shreyas Gopal.
It needs to be seen how this unit fair as the tournament progresses as they definitely need to forget their performance in their opening match and re-group as a unit.
7. Royal Challengers Bangalore:
Royal Challengers Bangalore on paper looks most strongest unit with skipper Virat Kohli, Quinton de Kock, Brendon McCullum, AB de Villiers and local talents Sarfraz Khan and Mandeep Singh making it a formidable batting unit. But like in previous years, it's their bowling which needs to work as a unit as even 200+ scores were easily chased against RCB.
In Umesh Yadav, they have the quickest bowler in India who can be unplayable, Yuzvendra Chahal can be dangerous if there is assistance to spinners and these 2 needs to be supported by the likes of Washington Sundar, Chris Woakes and others although the loss of Nathan Coulter-Nile will hurt RCB as he could have been their main bowler.
The chances of RCB making it to the playoffs depends on their bowlers as the batting unit looks formidable.
8. Sunrisers Hyderabad:
Sunrisers Hyderabad unarguably have the best bowling unit this year with the Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Siddarth Kaul, Billy Stanlake, Chris Jordan, Sandeep Sharma and T Natarajan completing their fast bowling unit and world class spinners in Rashid Khan, Shakib Al Hasan, Mohamad Nabi, Bipul Sharma and occasion spin of Yousuf Pathan can be more than handy.
Their batting also looks good with Shikhar Dhawan, Wridhiman Saha, Alex Hales, skipper Kane Williamson, Manish Pandey and the likes of Deepak Hooda and Yusuf Pathan will make it balanced even in the absence of David Warner.
Sunrisers Hyderabad is one of the better teams to reach the playoffs.
P.S: This is my personal analysis and is open for a discussion as others may have better views of this game.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to another analysis in a week's time as we will be having better idea of the teams with atleast 3 to 4 games per side completed by next week.
I think it is great that you are doing a post or posts on cricket. I will enjoy reading about what is happening in the sport.
We don't have TV so we really don't keep up on things like this.
It is good that you are writing about your passion. As always I love the pictures of the buildings. They are magnificent.
Yeah, it's like cricket fever time in India right now for this and next month as the most famous cricket league in the world in underway. Even many countries change their schedule not to overlap with IPL to enable their players participate in it just because of the lucrative money this tournament pays to players.
I grew up watching cricket and I have passion for it and love to write about the weekly updates on this.
So sad that you guys deprived of TV and other amenities because of the environmental conditions. I just hope it gets normal soon.
The pictures I had intended to use are those of the teams I had written about, unfortunately I couldn't get any royalty free pictures for the same, hence I included the pictures of famous cities of the respective teams :)
It is good you have a passion like cricket. These things make life wonderful. We all need to have something to watch with such enjoyment.
I need to clarify. We do have a TV and we do watch movies and TV shows but we are not connected to regular TV viewing like everyone else. We download what we want to watch. So when my family asks us if we seen the local game I have to say no. We will download only certain material. Just what we find interesting. There is a thing called Netflix here and it is really neat you can watch anything that they have on the server. I seen it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I think it is world wide. We don't have the internet connetion to be able to use these types of services. Out here internet is expensive. Most people have cheaper access. On our property we have such tall trees we cant't get the cheaper services. The trees interfer with the signal.
I enjoyed the pictures all the same. :)
Ah, I now fully understand the situation with the internet and tv watching there. Internet is getting cheaper and cheaper here with the competition among service providers here.
We get about 40 GB of 4G mobile internet along with free calls and sms's for about INR Rs. 400/month which is equivalent to US$ 6 per month. I normally use mobile internet on my laptop using mobile hotspot, which is more than sufficient for me.
As for as TV viewing is concerned, we do have multiple service providers and the price range varies based on the number of channels we subscribe.
That is really a decent price for internet. It sounds like a lot but when you convert it to USD it is pretty cheap. That is good that you have an alternative for internet. Sounds like your TV is similar to hear.
Internet is considerably cheaper in the city. We pay $110 for 20 GB. Pretty expensive
Yeah, a good price.
If there is a single or 2 service providers, then they try to monopolize the system with high prices. When a third service provider enters by providing same service at very less prize, other 2 have to follow the third one to stay in competition and make some money.
The same thing happened here about a year back. One of the giant industrialist entered the networking business by giving the internet and calling services free of cost for certain period and then with nominal price after introductory offer. Now, the price is very cheap and we all can afford that.
$110 for 20GB is way high, hopefully you will get a new network provider like the one I explained to reduce the price :)
I hope you are having a good day and the weather is improved.
There is competition like that in the cities over here. It usually doesn't happen in the country. There is not enough of us in the rural areas for competition. Also if we want the internet we will pay the price they give and they know that.
Between my cell phone and internet I do pay a lot. I am glad we live off grid so that we can afford to have them. Actually the price for cell phones and internet are coming down very slowly. This is the first year I am paying under $200 for them. This is a good thing. However your price looks really nice.
The weather is much improved. I am hoping to do a post soon on the changes. Now there is so much do do. Our rest time is over. We are outside most of the time now.
Yeah, when the competition is less, the network providers behave like bosses and we won't have much choice if we really have to buy one from them.
But here, it's a totally different story and competition is like hell and the bosses have to compromise and keep the customers happy to retain them. There is also mobile number portability here, using which, we can switch between network providers if we are not happy with a particular provider and that is something which is against those network providers.
Nice to know the weather has improved and I will be waiting for your post and see what new things are there to explore over there.
This is very interesting. I love the Mumbai Indians... They look great and very good for the match.
Hey, great man, any particular reason for liking Mumbai Indians? Of-course they are one of the most balanced side in this year's IPL.
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