Anand Krishna’s musings

At the end of the first half of the IPL tournament, Bangalore’s Royal Challengers are at the bottom of the table, having won just two of their seven games (and keeping in mind the net run rate at this time). Based on the likely result of the ongoing Mumbai-Jaipur match (I am reasonably sure Jaipur will lose), Mumbai will have won 3 of its matches. Only Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers are in the same boat as Bangalore- having lost all but 2 of ther games.

On paper, The Royal Challengers, to give the team its official name, was not the weakest. With Zaheer Khan, Dale Steyn, Praveen Kumar, Jacques Kallis and Kumble, their bowling attack is by no means a pushover. So if Bangalore finds itself in a hole, the credit goes entirely to the batsmen. Barring Ross Taylor, who scored well in the 5 games that he played, none of the team’s batsmen have fired. Jaffer and Dravid looked hopelessly out of their league in the first few games, but therafter, both have picked up (Dravid in the last game scored over 65 runs at a strike rate of 130+). Sadly, that is more than one can say of Virat Kohli, who looks a shadow of the aggressive youngster who captained the Under-19 team to victory at the T20 World Cup barely 6 weeks ago. And while Boucher and Kallis have looked good in parts, neither has displayed the consistency they are generally known for. Misbah too has not looked the match-winner he was for Pakistan during the World Cup in South Africa some months ago. Of course, he got a bad decision- but 5 ducks in a match? That is what the Royal Challengers’ score card showed at their last match. And no team can win from such a hopeless situation- especially in the T20 format where every over must count for at least 6 runs on average.

Too many experiments with the batting order haven’t helped either. And as if that would help, yesterday saw the resignation/sacking of the team’s CEO, Charu Sharma. Whether he resigned or was asked to go (as some seem to sugggest) is not fully clear yet. But suffice it to say that this will only add to the team’s woes and compound the pressure.

Theoretically, the Royal Challengers can still make it to the semi finals. But to do so, they probably need to win maybe 5 or 6 of their next 7 games. And with most being away games, the odds of this are not that great. Although Vijay Mallya does not have brands called Royal Mess or Royal Disasters, both these names describe the Bangalore team’s current status rather well. Don’t get me wrong- I like Dravid as a cricketer. But somewhere along the line, I think he ought to seriously look at the current state of the team and figure out a way of turning things around quickly. Obviously, T20 is not an individual sport; so Dravid by himself cannot do much. It is important for the other 10 players in every game to stand up and be counted. If not, one thing is quite clear- not too many of the current crop of the Royal Challengers will be around in next year’s IPL tournament.