An interesting day today with Punjab finally showing some fight & Delhi taking the fight out of the Royal Challengers. In both games there were some smart, aggressive team changes - dictated by match conditions, form & perhaps an odd one to give players rest. I think the composition will be crucial in determining the semi-final lineup in the next few weeks.
1. Punjab Kings XI: Rusty Theron for Lee(who is struggling) should have been done earlier . Also Romesh Powar who they bowled early delivered outstanding figures of under 6 runs an over. Jayawardene back as opener (where he’s had great success in Sri-Lanka) took the game away means that Bopara (who’s form has started to dip) will be out when Marsh returns. They took some tough calls and won – so perhaps they can redeem some pride in the 2nd half of the tournament. A much more balanced side now though Chawla is not really justifying his India call up yet.
2. Bangalore Royal Challengers: Kumble made the boldest moves – was great despite the loss today. He dropped Dale Steyn (conditions & also to get a foreign player in), Praveen Kumar (very inconsistent) & Manish Pandey (read earlier post that Pandey cant have a strike rate lower than Kallis & still open the innings).
I think Kumble needs to get 2 hard calls things right.
(a) Who is the 4th foreign player ? Ross Taylor & Kallis are no brainers. KP is a huge player and provides bowling options. So really White (the opening experiment didn’t work today but liked how Kumble thinks), Steyn (just 7 wickets in 8 games at an economy of 7.8 odd is hardly awe inspiring), Morgan (low odds for no fault of his) & Roelof (yes, i think he should be added in the mix for his all round abilities) are going to duke it out. Poor Boucher.
(b) What is Dravid’s role? In the best of times he is not needed to bat (doesn’t bowl, field :-) or keep) and in the worst of times comes in when the ask is 15 runs an over). He just seems set up to fail. If Kumble asks Kallis, KP & Kohli to play the role of staying to the end and Taylor, Uthappa, White/Roelof to attack then Dravid is not really needed. On the other hand if he does keep Dravid, he needs to ask KP and Kohli to really go for it as he then has a finisher on call on if needed and with the rate in the 8-10 runs per over Dravid can totally do it. Currently he seems under utilized with an unclear role.
Given that, I’d consider gambling with Roelof. Slow seems to be better than fast & he provides a handy hitting option. So I’d go with Kallis, Uthappa, KP, Ross, Kohli, Dravid & Roelof as the batting order. Alternatively if he decides to pick Steyn then have Dravid go in at whatever stage Kallis loses his wicket.
3. Delhi DareDevils : These guys also rang in the changes. They dropped McDonald (had to get in Vettori), Yadav (very unfortunate as he was bowling well but i think it was ‘cos they didn’t think pace worked on the Kotla) & Ladda (who’s been in and out along with his replacement Bhatia). Smart changes especially as Sangwan clicked & Vettori got some time with both bat and ball. However they also need to decide what to do once Nannes & Nehra are fit?. Mithun Manhas has played well in the past as has Yadav. Sehwag and Gambhir aren't really firing and its incredible (though very impressive) that they continue to bench Dilshan and AB De Villiers. I think this is going to be the toughest team composition (weird to say that since they are winning anyway) but I’d like to see Gambhir experiment in games 11,12 so that he can make the right call for the knockout stages.
4. KKR: Well, they didn’t really experiment and they lost. Not intended to be a correlation but their bowling is not really working. Perhaps its time to consider a batting heavy strategy & accept that they are always going to give 170+ runs away. So get McCullum (and Id’ argue Hodge) in. Bond , like Steyn , has promised but not really delivered. So Gayle, McCullum, Matthews & Hodge might be a better all round foreign mix. And then batting all rounders (Shukla, Gavaskar etc) so that there’s enough depth. And just make sure that Agarkar doesn't get carried away and that Kartik takes at least 1 out of every 3 catches that come his way!!!
Net, i think the team composition is a hard one with some tough calls needed but its what might make the difference as things start getting tight. In most cases , it’s a problem of plenty but somebody is going to have to be the water boy. What think?
4 comments:
GT, great analysis and thoughtful predictions. you have my vote if you decide to take up writing seriously
what happened to the predictions about who would be the leading run scorer and wicket taker? did anyone get it right or was i the only one :)
todays game: DC will pull one out of the hat to keep the points table wide open still
my dark horse for the semi finals: Kings XI.as i said before dont laught at this prediction just yet....
Waiting on Aloke to close this weeks round up. Who's your top scorer and wicket taker for the coming week?
very interesting indeed, this team composition business.
i liked what bangalore did, if for nothing else than to see a line up of Kallis, White, Pietersen, Taylor, Robin and Kohli. However, you dont need so many batsmen to win IPL games (as their opponents on sunday are showing with the continued benching of AB and Dilshan, and the curious absence from the party of Gambhir)
i think Deccan are also barking up the wrong tree (dropping Gibbs is right), but how exactly is replacing him with Dwayne Smith the answer?? Vaas will really hurt now - and probably get a game (he is still amongst top 10 wicket takers and eco rates!)
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