IPL 2012 - Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders - IPL5 – Team Guide – Part Two
Continued from the previous part ...
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Some of the cricket pundits believe that the Royal Challengers are going to start the fifth season as one of the favorites. The inclusion of Chris Gayle in the fourth season changed the fortunes of Bangalore as he blasted almost all the bowling line-ups in that tournament. The mighty left-hander from the Caribbean is going to be a vital player for Bangalore once again.
"We are fortunate to have Gayle from the start as well and this makes a big difference," captain of the Royal Challengers, Daniel Vettori commented on having the services of Gayle for the whole event.
In recent times, Virat Kohli has shown immense class as he played a couple of great innings in One Day International Cricket in last couple of months. He is going to be the key for Bangalore once again as he did brilliantly well in the last season of the league as well.
The skipper of Bangalore is all praise for Kohli’s recent form and said, "He is a confident and extremely talented player."
Vettori has led them quite nicely in the previous tournaments and he will also be looking to play a big role with the ball.
While talking about the track at Bangalore, Vettori expressed that the pitch suits the players of Bangalore because of additional bounce. As Bangalore will play almost half of their matches on the home turf, the captain is confident of a good showing in the season."It is a good wicket and got bit of a pace. We really enjoyed it last year. I think we will try to play to our strength as much as possible this IPL too," he said.
With Tillakaratne Dilshan and AB de Villiers in their ranks, Bangalore has one of the most destructive batting line-ups of the league.
Kolkata Knight Riders
Historically, the Knight Riders have always been a massive team on paper but they have failed to deliver the goods in the ground. However, there was an evident improvement in their performance in the last season under the captaincy of Gautam Gambhir.
The current balance of the team is very impressive and if their players are in form, the Knight Riders are surely going to be a huge force in the tournament. Gambhir, Brendon McCullum, Jacques Kallis, Manoj Tiwary and Yusuf Pathan have the ability to post huge runs on the board on consistent basis. With Iqbal Abdullah and Brett Lee, the Knight Riders have a strong bowling unit as well.
Recently, Gambhir has been replaced by Virat Kohli as the vice-captain of the Indian team and former Pakistan captain and the bowling coach of the Knight Riders slammed the decision of the Indian selectors. He feels that Gambhir has a great opportunity to answer his critics by leading Kolkata in a fascinating manner.
Akram expressed, "First time, I saw the vice-captain was dropped after losing. Usually the captain is dropped after losing. I don't understand what made the selectors to drop him. I don't know about him and what he feels but if I were Gambhir then definitely I would have thought 'you removed me from the vice-captaincy and my goal would have been to win this IPL and prove a point'.”
To be continued ...
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