Bangalore Challenged!

Its halfway through the IPL and there's lot of surprises.....the biggest being the fate of "Bangalore Royal Challengers" the big ticket team of Vijay Mallya's UB Group (Franchise fee of $ 111.6 million).





As they find themselves at the bottom of the points table Mallya is not a happy man....Sacking of CEO Charu sharma comes as no surprise following the dismal performance of the team which has been duped by the media as "Test XI" (Thanks to the kind of players who have been bought in at the auction).


Its no hidden fact that the lead in selecting the team was Rahul Dravid (The Captain who was bought at $ 1,035,000) and its only fair that he takes the blame for the poor showing of the team. One look at the team and you know this is not a T20 squad. How could you justify the inclusion of players like Sunil joshi (38 years), Anil Kumble (38 years) , Rahul Sharad Dravid (35 years), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (34 years), Misbah-ul-Haq (34 years)), Jacques Henry Kallis (33 years), Mark Verdon Boucher (32 years), Wasim Jaffer (31 years) and an ageing (reaching 30!) Zaheer Khan.

The matches so far have proved all the critics right. Sunil joshi and Anil kumble have been total failures with poor performance clubbed with injury scares. Kallis has been such a failure with the bat and Misbah has not been given a proper run in the tournament yet. The only saving grace is mark boucher who has shown good fighting spirit with the bat. Ravid is the higgest run scorer for the team but he is No: 15 in the list of run getters in IPL which explains the last place which his team is holding too.

As time is running out for Dravid and his men...its only fair to expect that the youngsters in the team like kohli, kumars, patil and others will have to play a far bigger role in the forthcoming matches for the bangalore team to move out of thier place in the team table...For the supporters of the team, its time to forget about thier local team's performance and sit back and enjoy the Delhi, chennai, Punjab & kolkata team fight it out against the rajasthan royals (The black horse of the tournamaent). As for dravid, it looks like his retirement from international cricket could well be round the corner!