IPL Season 5: Curtain Raiser (Part 4)

Team Bellevision

(Indian Premier League or IPL- season 5 is about to begin.  In this series of articles on IPL 5 leading to the tournament, we bring you team overview & compositions, past performances, IPL 5 schedule and much more…)

 

02 April 2012: Just 2 days to go for the 5th edition of Indian Premier League.  Some of the key players will be missing the action due to their international commitments.  Australia is playing West Indies in West Indies.  Players like Michael Clarke, Shane Watson will not be available till the end of April.  England is playing Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka.  Kumar Sangakkara is going to miss his first match.

 

The organizers are hoping that this IPL will bring back the audience to the stadiums and to their tv sets.  Around 26 bollywoods movies are set to release during IPL.  Who will win the battle or will it be a win-win situation for all? Let us wait and watch.

 

In this concluding series we bring you the details of Rahasthan Royals and Mallya owned Royal Challengers Bangalore and complete schedule of IPL.  Wish all cricket lovers an exciting IPL.

 

Rajasthan Royals

Rajasthan Royals went on to win IPL 1 and surprised everybody with their performance.   No one expected to them to win in 2008.  In the year 2012, Rahul Dravid is replacing Shane Warne as the skipper of Rajasthan Royals and has big expectations from him after his retirement from International cricket.  Since 1st IPL the performance of RR has not been up to the mark.

 

   

 

The star players of the side along with Rahul Dravid are all rounder Shane Watson of Australia, South Africa T20 captain Johan Botha. Two Brads Hodge and Hogg, Dinesh Chandimal.  Rajasthan Royals have some capable local players in Swapnil Asnodkar, Stuart Binny who has performed very well in recent tournaments with bat and ball, Pankaj Singh, S Sreesanth etc.  Cricket pundits do not have much hope on this squad to win.  Can 2008 champions pull off the impossible feat once again?

 

 

Owner(s):
Shipla Shetty and Raj Kundra, Emerging Media

 

Squad:

Captain:
Rahul Dravid

 

Coach:
Monty Desai

 

Home Ground:
Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur

 

Performance:

 

Matches

 

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya owned Royal Challengers Bangalore is the most balanced team in the tournament.  It has some swashbuckling hitters and very good bowler in the side.  Apart from 2008, their performance in the championship has been above average.  They finished at the top in round robin stages last year but lost to Chennai Super Kings in the final.

 

    

 

The team is lead by New Zealander Daniel Vettori and has some exciting talent.  Virat Kohli is in the form of his life and has played some magnificent knocks recently for India in Commonwealth Bank Series and Asia Cup.  Chris Gayle is another batsman who can tear apart any attack on his day will open the innings for RCB.  Apart from these A B De Villiers, Thilakaratne Dilshan, Vinay Kumar, Muthaiah Muralidharan, Dirk Nannes, Zahir Khan, Abhimanyu Mithun, Sreenath Arvind make them a side to beat.

 

 

Owner(s):
Dr. Vijay Mallya

 

Squad:

 

Captain:
Daniel Vettori

Coach:
Ray Jennings

Bowling Coach:
Venkatesh Prasad

Home Ground:
Chinnaswamy Stadium, bangalore

Performance:

 

Matches

 

IPL 2012 Schedule