Author: SK

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 quick bowler (yo, ganapathy, etc. are jsut military medium).

That said, I get the feeling the Super Kings might destroy the Chepauk and make a slow low pitch, and put one dibbly dobbly attack. Anyways here goes…

1. Abhinav Mukund
2. Matthew Hayden
3. Suresh Raina
4. Michael Hussey
5. S Badrinath
6. Mahendra Singh Dhoni
7. Jacob Oram
8. Joginder Sharma
9. Debashis Mohanty
10. V Yo Mahesh
11. M Muralitharan

Bench

12. Stephen Fleming
13. Parthiv Patel
14. Albie Morkel
15. Makhaya Ntini
16. R Ashwin

I’ve put in Abhinav Mukund there based on current form, and Ranji performance. However, given that VB Chandrasekhar (the selector) is close to Srikkanth, you might see Anirudha walking out with Hayden.

One name you’d find surprising in there is former Indian swing bowler Debashis Mohanty. The reason I put him here is that he doesn’t seem to be in line for selection to his “catchment” Hyderabad team – they seem to have stuck to a Gult policy (apart from Halhadhar Das) and preferred people like P Vijay Kumar over Mohanty. Given that this team has no quick bowlers apart from Ntini (Yo is dibbly-dobbly level) I think Mohanty has a good chance.

Also, looking at the Calcutta team composition, it’s likely that their pace attack consists of Akhtar, Agarkar and Ishant, thus leaving space for exactly one of RR Bose and SS Paul in their squad. I think the spillover will happen to Chennai, who lack quick bowlers. I haven’t listed either of them here, but I won’t be surprised if they boot out say Stephen Fleming from the squad (bringing him in only when Hayden isn’t playing) and including this guy – whichever of the two it is.

The captain also hasn’t been appointed formally, though it is very likely to be Dhoni. Unless, of course, Karunanidhi protests against Aryan dominance, in which case Murali will get the armband.

Earlier
Mohali
Delhi
Bangalore

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 said in an interview with the guardian that she didn’t have much of a clue regarding her team’s selection. Nevertheless, Mohali appears to be an extremely well chosen team. Here is my idea of their starting line-up.

1. Turuwar Kohli (who, according to Abdurrahim Khankhana, doesn’t eat fruit)
2. Karan Goel
3. Kumar Sangakkara
4. Mahela Jayawardene
5. Ramnaresh Sarwan
6. Yuvraj Singh.
7. Irfan Pathan
8. Piyush Chawla
9. Brett Lee
10. VRV Singh
11. Sreesanth

Bench:
12. Simon Katich
13. Ramesh Powar
14. Uday Kaul
15. Vikramjeet Malik
16. has to be a young (U-22) Indian slogger. maybe needs to be poached from outside the zone.

Another option would be to replace Vikramjeet Malik by Siddharth Kaul (who is U-22) so that there’s no age restriction on the other specialist slogger. Also, the “local” quota is filled, so this slogger can be from anywhere. Don’t have that much of an idea right now.

I expect Mohali to prepare a quick and bouncy track, which can be exploited well by their four-pronged pace attack. They have a well-qualified batting line-up which will be able to take on the best of bowling attacks on a fast pitch. While playing away, on slower surfaces, they may drop VRV in favor of Powar.

Earlier:
Delhi
Bangalore

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 likely to make the squad – if not for anything else, but to give Goa some kind of representation
• K B Pawan’s strike rate this season at the Ranji Trophy was lower than Yere Goud’s. Which is saying something
• Vinay Kumar’s averages this season were significantly superior to Aiyappa’s.
• Ryan Ninan is this promising offspinning all rounder. And he’s u-22

Anyways, make appropriate changes to that Bangalore list. This post is about Delhi. So let’s get started.

There are these 3-4 local guys who are Delhi’s to lose. They have an excellent domestic record, and have also shown that they have the skills that are appreciated for Twenty20. Another thing is that Delhi has signed up too many foreigners, so the bench is going to be crowded. Unless they drop some foreigners altogether, there might be some kind of bench problems. So here’s my starting eleven for Delhi

1. Virender Sehwag
2. Gautam Gambhir
3. A B de Villiers
4. Virat Kohli
5. Manoj Tiwary
6. Rajat Bhatia
7. Dinesh Karthik
8. Daniel Vettori
9. Mohammad Asif
10. Glenn McGrath
11. Pradeep Sangwan

Virat Kohli is the captain of the India U-19 team, and is generally highly rated. By scoring a big hundred against Karnataka in a rain-curtailed affair, he showed that he has the temperament to build an innings (note that Delhi was the only team to bat well against Karnataka, whose bowlers did generally pretty well). And yesterday, playing against West Indies U-19, he scored a quickfire 100 to set up India’s win.

Rajat Bhatia was touted as Robin Singh’s probable successor back in 2000. Though he didn’t quite live up to that promise, he has emerged as one of the best all-rounders in domestic cricket today. There is still a chance that Delhi might prefer Shoaib Malik to him, and maybe replace McGrath by Sudeep Tyagi, in which case I get the feeling he might go play for Chennai, since he’s already represented TN in the Ranji.

Sangwan is a good left arm quick who had an excellent Ranji season, and who destroyed South Africa u-19 some 3 days back. Again, Delhi’s to lose.

Delhi easily completes the local quota from the playing XI itself. Given their line-up it’s not hard to see why they could let Praveen Kumar go (unconfirmed but sources are good)? to Bangalore. They have 3 U-22’s already (Kohli, Sangwan, Tiwary) so need only one more. So here is the bench.

12. Shikhar Dhawan
13. Sudeep Tyagi
14. Farveez Maharoof
15. Shoaib Malik
16. TM Dilshan

Again, you see that only 2 indian guys are on the bench, which might be a cause for concern. I won’t be surprised if they send Maharoof home, and pick him only when Malik/Vettori is not available. He could be replaced by Amit Mishra, the Haryana leg-spinner. Note that Vettori won’t be available for the last bit, so they’ll need another spinner. Alternately, they could keep this 16, and bring in Mishra only when Vettori leaves.

Update

I checked and found that Manoj Tiwary isn’t under 22, so doesn’t qualify for the quota. This would mean that Delhi will have to get in another youngster. I think they’ll drop Shikhar Dhawan in favour of Tanmay Srivastava

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 from Karnataka/Goa/Services or U-22; and if they can find someone really good, he might replace either Pawan or Pandey). Whenever Bracken is playing for Australia, his place in the squad will be taken by Vinay Kumar.

And all the U-22 guys I’ve named here are from Karnataka. So if we can find better fast bowlers than Aiyappa or Vinay Kumar, they could make it ahead of these guys. So basically it’ll be 4 specialist bowlers, with Kallis and Dhiman performing fifth bowler duties. They may even think of playing 2 specialist spinners since the part timers are medium pacers.

Remember that it’s a squad of 16, wiht at least 4 local guys and 4 U-22 guys. And at a time, not more than 4 foreigners can be in the playing XI.

Let me know your views on this

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.

One thing you’ll quickly observe when you team is that the “displacement” is very high. Apart from Gambhir and veterans Kumble and Laxman, most of the people who were in the open pool have gone to “non-home” teams. I’m not talking about people like Sreesanth or Dhoni or any of the UP guys here since they don’t have a “natural home”.

I wanted to draw a graph for this, but am too lazy so will just write it down. The columns are name, home team, actual team

Robin Uthappa –> Bangalore –> Mumbai
Manoj Tiwary –> Calcutta –> Delhi
Harbhajan Singh –> Mohali –> Mumbai
Rohit Sharma –> Mumbai –> Hyderabad
Ishant Sharma –> Delhi –> Calcultta
Dinesh Karthik –> Madras –> Delhi

And then you have Zaheer Khan and Agarkar and Powar and just about everyone else.

The BCCI has put a rule that there should be at least 4 “local” guys and 4 under-22 guys in each squad and teams seem to have not made any effort to pick the “local” guys from the international pool itself. There is also a rule that there shouln’t be more than 4 playres in the playing XI from abroad. it also appears as if some teams didn’t really remember this particular rule when the bidding happened. I would’ve surely expected more foreign players to be left unbid after yesterday.

And yeah, given the composition of the team, we can expect the Bangalore pitch to be dug up soon.

United Bangalore would have been so much better.

Just a little context here. Some ten-twelve years back, when the National Football League was started, FC Kochi became the first professional football team in India. Following it’s decent performance in the first couple of editions of the League, a similar team called Bangalore United was proposed. The promoters went to Vijay Mallya for sponsorship, which he agreed to on the condition that the name of the team be changed to United Bangalore, for obvious reasons.

And I just think that would’ve been so much better a name than what they’ve chosen now.

The IPL auction is due to start in an hour. I seriously wish I were there. Preferably representing one of the franchises, maybe the UB group. Every franchise team there needs one guy who is good at economics and quantitative stuff. I’m kicking myself for not thinking on these lines earlier.

The structure of the auction itself is interesting. Players’ names will get picked randomly, and teams will have to bid for them in an open auction. The money goes to the BCCI coffers. Yes, the more intuitive thing to have done would have been to let the teams build their own teams. However, that wouldnt’ have fetched much for the BCCI. Unless it levied some extra “income tax”.

I have a feeling that the eight franchises have got together in a hotel room last night and mutually decided who gets whom. The gentleman’s game can do well with a gentleman’s agreement (though the last such agreement – about close catches – turned ungentlemanly). So the Madras team will have requested the others not to bid for Dinesh Karthik, and in return they won’t bid for Gilchrist or Dhoni or Sangakkara or …? There will definitely be a few clashes. The fact that the franchisees didn’t allow VVS Laxman to be a marquee player clearly shows one other franchise (apart from Hyderabad) is interested in him. These will probably be the only guys who will get aggressively bid for.

It is clear that cut throat competition between the franchises will bring no benefit to them. It will only leave a few of them poorer. Of course, if there is one cash-rich franchise who will want to raise money for the BCCI they might generally bid up for all players. However, the gentlemen’s agreement is likely to take care of this.

Also, I realize that the process of team building here is non-trivial – in fact it is much tougher than in the normal super selector games. Here, there is exclusivity – each guy has to play for only one team, prices are dynamic, players’ names are picked in random order which means you have to make “online decisions” (one problme that has left my head in shambles, both during my BTech project, and earlier in this job).. Each franchise is allowed to take some six people for the auction. I’m sure one of the six for each franchise will be this quant guy. Damn! I wanted to be there!

Ok – here is my prediction. The “big marquee guys” are more likely to go to teams who have a good ranji base in the catchment area – say Jaipur or Delhi. These teams know that they can build a good base of the squad from even outside of these auctions (Delhi has Delhi and UP under it, while Jaipur has Rajasthan, Baroda, Saurashtra and Gujarat) so they’ll prefer to use their money to get in a few stalwarts. Need not be very sale-able names (they’ll go to the teams who have really big business interests – such as Bangalore) but really good guys. Like Gayle or Sangakkara or Oram or Kallis…

Bangalore and Hyderabad are two teams whose promotors have “B2C” (business to consumer) businesses, and don’t have a very strong ranji base. It will be interesting to see what they do – they need to get the bulk of the squad in the auctions, and the marquee players will be of best value to these promoters than for anything else. Maybe they’ll get one or two marquee guys each and spend the rest on mid-table guys.

It’s all oh-so-confusing! And the BCCI are fools to not telecast this auction live! Would’ve brought in good money for Set Max I think. At least a web cast or something would have been good.. .

Type1: It’s more like a generalized crib. You crib because you need to get something out of your system. And you expect support. All that is required for you when you do this is for someone to just listen to you. Someone to just listen to you and just generally reassure you. That person may or may not have fundaes over the thing that you are cribbing about.

Type2: This one is more specific. You are cribbing about something specific, and you are in need for a specific solution. Just a general hearing and a “don’t worry it’ll be fine” won’t do in this case. You need specific solutions, and ideas. The person being cribbed to needs to be in a position to be able to help you – which means he/she needs to have domain knowledge about your crib.

This is more like an advanced crib. You are in trouble, and you think you have an idea as to how to get out of it. So your expectations from the person you crib to are higher. And you are in a way also asking more from the person you are cribbing to.

Sometimes, even finding people to crib to (incase of type 2 cribs) is tough!?

I should’ve written about this a few days back, but consistent NED and a huge pipeline (which i’ve kinda juggled) ensured that I kept postponing it.

The article in question is this piece in one of the inside pages of the Deccan Herald a couple of weeks back. I can’t recal another article in a major newspaper (yes, the DH is the second biggest paper in Bangalore; and the one that most “traditional” people read) that is so horrible.

I was thinking of doing a point-by-point analysis of the piece, but then realize it’s so badly written that it would take too much time to write etc. So just read and enjoy.

And the mainstream media claims that the best bloggers are journalists! Pah?