IPL Game Schedule & Teams

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IPL Schedule

April 19 : Delhi v Jaipur at Delhi
April 20: Mumbai v Bangalore at Mumbai;Kolkata v Hyderabad at Kolkata
April 21: Jaipur v Mohali at Jaipur
April 22: Hyderabad v Delhi at Hyderabad
April 23: Chennai v Mumbai at Chennai
April 24: Hyderabad v Jaipur at Hyderabad
April 25: Mohali v Mumbai at Mohali
April 26: Bangalore v Jaipur at Bangalore; Chennai v Kolkata at Chennai
April 27: Mumbai v Hyderabad at Mumbai;Mohali v Delhi at Mohali
April 28: Bangalore v Chennai at Bangalore
April 29: Kolkata v Mumbai at Kolkata
April 30: Delhi v Bangalore at Delhi.
May 1: Hyderabad v Mohali at Hyderabad; Jaipur v Kolkata at Jaipur
May 2: Chennai v Delhi at Chennai.
May 3: Hyderabad at Bangalore at Hyderabad; Mohali v Kolkata at Mohali
May 4: Mumbai v Delhi at Mumbai; Jaipur v Chennai at Jaipur
May 5: Bangalore v Mohali at Bangalore
May 6: Chennai v Hyderabad at Chennai
May 7: Mumbai v Jaipur at Mumbai
May 8: Delhi v Chennai at Delhi; Kolkata v Bangalore at Kolkata
May 9: Jaipur v Hyderabad at Jaipur
May 10: Bangalore v Mumbai at Bangalore; Chennai v Mohali at Chennai
May 11: Hyderabad v Kolkata at Hyderabad; Jaipur v Delhi at Jaipur
May 12: Mohali v Bangalore at Mohali
May 13: Kolkata v Delhi at Kolkata
May 14: Mumbai v Chennai at Mumbai;Mohali v Jaipur at Mohali
May 15: Delhi v Hyderabad at Delhi
May 16: Mumbai v Kolkata at Mumbai
May 17: Delhi v Mohali at Delhi; Jaipur v Bangalore at Jaipur
May 18: Hyderabad v Mumbai at Hyderabad; Kolkata v Chenna at Kolkata
May 19: Bangalore v Delhi at Bangalore
May 20: Kolkata v Jaipur at Kolkata
May 21: Mumbai v Mohali at Mumbai; Chennai v Bangalore at Chennai
May 22: Delhi v Kolkata at Delhi
May 23: Mohali v Hyderabad at Mohali.
May 24: Delhi v Mumbai at Delhi; Chennai v Jaipur at Chennai
May 25: Bangalore v Hyderabad at Bangalore; Kolkata v Mohali at Kolkata
May 26: Jaipur v Mumbai at Jaipur
May 27: Hyderabad v Chennai at Hyderabad
May 28 and 29: Rest days
May 30: First semi-final at Mumbai
May 31: Second semi-final at Mumbai
June 1: Final at Mumbai

IPL Teams

Team: Bangalore Royal Challengers
Owner’s Name: Vijay Mallya

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Rahul Dravid (icon) - 15% more
Anil Kumble - $5,00,000
Jacques Kallis - $9,00,000
Zaheer Khan - $4,50,000
Mark Boucher - $4,50,000
Cameron White - $5,00,000
Wasim Jaffer - $1,50,000
Dale Steyn - $3,25,000
Nathan Bracken - $3,25,000
Shivnarine Chanderpaul - $2,00,000

Team: Mumbai
Owner’s Name: Mukesh Ambani

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Sachin Tendulkar (icon) - 15% more
Harbhajan Singh - $8,50,000
Sanath Jayasuriya - $9,75,000
Shaun Pollock - $5,50,000
Robin Uthappa - $8,00,000
Lasith Malinga - $3,50,000
Dilhara Fernando - $1,50,000
Loots Bosman - $1,75,000

Team: Kolkata
Owner’s Name: Shah Rukh Khan

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Sourav Ganguly (icon) - 15% more
Shoaib Akhtar - $4,25,000
Ricky Ponting - $4,00,000
Brendon McCullum - $7,00,000
Chris Gayle - $8,00,000
Ajit Agarkar - $3,30,000
David Hussey - $6,75,000
Ishant Sharma - $9,50,000
Murali Kartik - $4,25,000
Umar Gul - $1,50,000
Tatenda Taibu - $1,25,000

Team: Delhi Daredevils
Owner’s Name: GMR Holdings

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Virender Sehwag (icon) - 15% more
Daniel Vettori - $6,25,000
Shoaib Malik - $5,00,000
Mohammad Asif - $6,50,000
Dinesh Karthik - $5,25,000
AB de Villiers - $3,00,000
Farveez Maharoof - $2,25,000
Tillakaratne Dilshan - $2,50,000
Manoj Tiwary - $6,75,000
Gautam Gambhir - $7,25,000
Glenn McGrath - $3,50,000

Team: Chennai Super Kings
Owner’s Name: India Cement

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

M.S.Dhoni - $1.5 million
Muttiah Muralitharan - $6,00,000
Matthew Hayden - $3,75,000
Jacob Oram - $6,75,000
Stephen Fleming - $350,000
Parthiv Patel - $3,25,000
Joginder Sharma - $2,25,000
Albie Morkel - $6,50,000
Suresh Raina - $6,50,000
Makhaya Ntini - $2,00,000
Michael Hussey - $3,50,000

Team: Mohali
Owner’s Name: Preity Zinta & Ness. Wadia

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Yuvraj Singh (icon) - 15% more
Mahela Jayawardene - $4,75,000
Kumar Sangakkara - $7,00,000
Brett Lee - $9,00,000
S.Sreesanth - $6,25,000
Irfan Pathan - $9,25,000
Ramesh Powar - $1,70,000
Piyush Chawla - $4,00,000
Simon Katich - $2,00,000
Ramnaresh Sarwan - $2,25,000

Team: Jaipur
Owner’s Name: Emerging Media

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

Shane Warne - $4,50,000
Graeme Smith - $4,75,000
Younis Khan - $2,25,000
Kamran Akmal - $1,50,000
Yusuf Pathan - $4,75,000
Mohammad Kaif - $6,75,000
Munaf Patel - $2,75,000
Justin Langer - $2,00,000

Team: Hyderabad
Owner’s Name: Deccan Chronicle

Players - Bid Amount (figures in USD):

V. V. S. Laxman (Captain) - $375,000
Andrew Symonds - $1,350,000
R. P. Singh - $875,000
Rohit Sharma - $750,000
Adam Gilchrist - $700,000
Shahid Afridi - $675,000
Herschelle Gibbs - $575,000
Chaminda Vaas - $200,000
Scott Styris - $175,000
Nuwan Zoysa - $110,000
Chamara Silva - $100,000

Teams have to think on their feet

Kris Srikkanth Saturday, May 10, 2008

Teams have to think on their feetThe IPL schedule leaves no time for thought. Teams have to rework strategies quickly as otherwise their approach will become so well known that opponents will be better prepared with counter-strategies. Chennai Super Kings were forced to rethink their tactics after three successive losses and they came up with a winning formula in New Delhi in a thriller. It is pretty obvious that a flying start is a necessity in the format. But teams hitting from both ends have found themselves in a hole because they have lost too many wickets in too short a space. S. Vidyut, who has shaped a fantastic limited-overs career for himself, was the fire starter while Fleming played the foil superbly against the Daredevils. Vidyut gave Chennai the confidence that the chase was on after Gautam Gambhir had given the Daredevils a better than average total. Full credit to Dhoni for taking some hard decisions in what was a crunch match for Chennai by winning which they have returned to the top of the table. The skipper was not afraid to put people on the bench. The tactic of chasing also worked because you can expect a Kotla pitch to play the same way in the entire duration of a match. Two or three hitters in the top five or six are sufficient. If they are kept apart in the order, they seem to exert more pressure as Albie Morkel took over Vidyut's role when Dhoni himself was struggling to get the ball away. One great over of Morkel's hitting was enough to close the gap after which Dhoni played smart cricket by ensuring his side would have batsmen left to fight to the end. Morkel's assault put so much pressure on Sehwag that he seemed to stop thinking and so messed up his end overs strategy. He had to virtually toss a coin to decide whether he would bowl the last over or ask Shoaib Malik to handle it. Actually, neither of them should have been bowling that over which should have gone to a seamer. Saturday's clash between the Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings XI becomes crucial for both teams. The winners can expect to get away from the bunch towards a semi-final slot. The key to Chennai's strategy would be to take on Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan without losing too many wickets in looking for a flying start. Not to charge at both bowlers would be the best way to go about it. The key to Chennai staying at the top is the team does not push the panic button. This confidence seems to flow from the skipper who is never hassled. With the race for the semi-finals hotting up now after the halfway mark, the table leaders will know that their being at the top will put pressure on the others. Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals and Punjab Kings XI have the early mover advantage.

Source: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/ipl/columns/columns_20080510_2.html

Cricket is no longer a sport

Partab Ramchand

Source: http://sify.com/sports/fullstory.php?id=14677593

That cricket is no longer a sport but an industry in India is well known for some time now. But even after accepting this, it must be said that events associated with the Indian Premier League have taken the game into a new realm, a corporate world. One has only to go through what Vijay Mallya, the high-profile liquor baron and owner of the Bangalore Royal Challengers has said recently to fully grasp the fact that the IPL is well and truly entrenched as a business venture. In Tests and ODIs, if a player fails he is dropped by the selectors. In the IPL, as we have seen when a team fails, key personnel can be sacked and even the captain and coach may be pulled up and uncomfortable questions asked of them by the franchise owners.

In a way, given the background – the astronomical amounts of money invested, the much-publicised auctions, the high-profile tournament, the unprecedented worldwide TV audience and revenues and the consequent high expectations – it was always on the cards that the failure of the Royal Challengers would trigger off some sort of controversy and an unpleasant situation. And big boss Mallya, never one to mince words, has made it clear that he is disappointed with his team's non-performance.

First, he showed CEO Charu Sharma the door and then took on the captain Rahul Dravid in matters of team selection. The high-profile industrialist publicly questioned the team's composition and performance and this led to much debate. But the majority view was that the team owners had every right to ask questions after ploughing in so much money. The franchisee cost for the Royal Challengers is 111.6 million dollars, just below the highest paid out in the case of the Mumbai Indians and a little higher than the franchisee cost for Deccan Chargers, another team that has been a major disappointment despite the big names involved.

In interviews, Mallya made it clear that he had other players in mind but backed the judgement of Sharma and Dravid. "In fact in the second auction, when Dravid was absent, I wanted my set of players but Charu was very tentative and I was held back. It was I who brought in Misbah-ul-Haq. People have to understand IPL has a corporate side to it. It's not all cricket in the traditional sense. I just want to tell Rahul Dravid to do the best he can with this team and produce results. Dravid doesn't enjoy being at the bottom of the league and neither do I."
Mallya also said that he regretted not being involved in the squad's selection during the auction. "My biggest mistake was to abstain from the selection of the team. Though I watch a lot of cricket whenever possible, I am no cricket expert at the end of the day," Mallya said. "I had a separate list of players that I wanted. But since Dravid is such an iconic player I trusted his judgment and then Charu also backed him. After seeing the final list, my friends told me it looked like a Test team. But I backed both of them thinking that they advised me properly. Unfortunately in cricket, unlike in any other sport, the captain is the boss."

Not expectedly, senior players have come out in defence of the beleaguered Dravid but even they admitted that the owners had a right to ask questions given their huge investments. Indian Test captain Anil Kumble, while saying that he did understand that the IPL is different and there is a corporate look and feel to the entire concept ``at the end of the day it is a cricket match and one that a cricketer does not want to lose.'' No one denies that but when the showing is as shoddy as the Bangalore's team has been, questions will be asked. Even VVS Laxman, the captain of the Deccan Chargers, while coming out in support of Dravid, expressed the view that the IPL's team owners had every right to ask questions, given the investments involved. "The owners can ask why things are not happening. But I can only speak for my team and say that our owners have been very supportive. It was very important for us that even during the tough periods, they came, spoke to us and encouraged us."

Two important lessons can be learnt from the failures of the two teams. One is that big names and iconic stars do not guarantee success. Even in Twenty20, the traditional values of cricket – leadership, team work, dedication and determination – are important. And, of course, the other important point is that as far as the IPL is concerned there is a distinct corporate angle to it what with the huge amount of money invested. And like in the competitive corporate world you have to produce results or you may have to face the music or even be shown the door. Cricket is no longer a sport, it is a business and that point has just been driven home by the failures of two high-profile teams and the reactions to their disastrous campaigns.