Who Will Win The IPL Trophy?

By Atul and Ananth
April 23 2008

Atul, who is known for his keen cricket knowledge and down to earth thinking on all things cricket, thinks that apart from team composition, a strong captain is essential to teams winning tournaments. Here is his take on who will end up holding the trophy:

On current form I can rank the captains from weakest to strongest as follows: VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, M.S. Dhoni.

Dravid’s Royal Challengers have good bowlers but suffer from the same problem like Laxman’s Chargers, where he is one of the opener. So I will place the Challengers at no. 8

Tendulkar is tactically very good captain and his captainship is more suited to this form than test but bowling is very weak. I'll place his team, the Mumbai Indians at no 7.

Yuvraj has a good team but his captainship skills are wanting. He seems to be quite lost in the field sometimes. I'll place his team, the Punjab Kings XI at no 6.

Actually despite his captaincy being the weakest, Laxman's Chargers seem to have a good team composition. But if first 2 batsman out of 3 are Venugopal Rao and VVS Laxman then essentially team is wasting power play overs and starting maybe 10/15 runs in the hole. But with the inclusion of Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, and Shahid Afridi I’ll still pick this team to finish at no 5.

Shane Warne has very aggressive skills as captain and has chosen some really good foreign players but limitation of 4 foreign players in the team will limit his maneuvering skills. Plus he has Mohammad Kaif as opener, a big drag on the strike rate. I'll place his team, the Rajasthan Royals at no 4.

Ganguly is a proven captain and leader but the anticipated departure of some of his key Australian players including Ponting and Hussey to play Test cricket in latter leg of tournament will weaken his side , I'll place his team, the Kolkata Knight Riders at no. 3

Dhoni as captain seems to have the Midas touch and recently their home wicket in Chennai is the flattest wicket you'll ever see. I expect the Chennai Super Kings to do very good at home but their team composition is little weak than Sehwag’s Delhi Daredevils. I'll thus place Dhoni’s team at no 2.

Sehwag will be bent on proving that he is a better captain than Dhoni. Until Dhoni usurped his spot, Sehwag was on track to the Indian captainship throne. He now may want to capture that throne again. He has wisely selected in his team probably the best T20 bowlers available to all of the tournament. The miserly trio of Mohammad Asif, Glenn McGrath, Farvez Maharoof, supported by the explosive batting of the first three batsmen, captain Sehwag, and his two Delhi teammates Gautam Gambhir, and Shikhar Dhawan make the Daredevils my pick for no. 1 team and the likely winners of the tournament.

Ananth, similarly has a deep appreciation for the subtleties of cricket be it Test, ODI or T20. And this is his take on how the teams stack up:

My current rating would be:

1) Delhi - in short evidence, seem to have the best fielding and bowling side. Plus they have Sehwag & Gambhir. I'm not sold on the rest of their batting though. Especially guys like Malik, Dhawan & DK or De Villiers don't inspire great confidence in me. But their bowling is awesome, with McGrath, Asif and Maharoof. I think they will win the cup.

2) Kolkata - I think the first match was a bit of an aberration but the second game was more like it. They'll win close games, but Ponting & Ganguly have been disappointing with the bat. They won't get low scoring games every time out. But their versatile team composition should see them being very competitive.

3) Chennai - Hayden, Hussey, Dhoni, Murali make an excellent veteran core and the youngsters Badri & Raina have been good so far and pretty good fielding side as well. They seem to be the favorites of many pundits.

4) Rajasthan - I have been impressed by the Rajasthan Royals team performing as a unit. These guys could be a handful especially when Graeme Smith, Dimitri Mascarehas, Younis Khan, and Morne Morkel get in. Warne has gelled this team well. Ravindra Jadeja is a find. Trivedi is ok for this format. And they have some decent pop coming up to join them in the form of Mascarenhas and Morkel.

5) Bangalore - Dravid has looked a better leader than Yuvraj & Laxman and I think he is a better batter in the T20 if he doesn't open and instead comes in later. Also note the guys set to join Bangalore shortly: Anil Kumble, Dale Steyn, Misbah Ul Haq. I'm pretty sure Jaffer will be booted and the young wicketkeeper Shreevats Goswami used when all these guys show up. Heck I'd even play Goswami in place of BoucherSee above. This team is a sleeper pick for me.

6) Mumbai - How will Sachin play? No team's fortunes rest more on one guy than this one. Their bowling looks thin. Pollock came too low down and I think Sanath Jayasuriya is done as a player.

7) Mohali - Yuvraj looks lost as skipper. Brett Lee looks disinterested. Sree looks as much a basket case as ever. I think their undoing is lack of leadership on the field showing up in their bowling & fielding efforts.

8) Deccan - Laxman seems soft on the field and unable to come up with a coherent batting order. Not much to say about the bowling when you don't put decent scores. Also I think they are catching a Gilly who is aging very fast.

The consensus thus seems to be that the top 4 teams are Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Rajasthan. And what do you know? The current point table reflects this as well. But will this still be the case come June? Who will be ICF’s Pundit Maharaj, Peer Syed Sahib and Ajmeri Baba rolled into one?