Bangalore Royal Challengers – IPL Dark Horses or Twenty20 Misfits?

This is an item that I wrote more than a year back; before the start of the first IPL season. With the impending second season just 29 days away, I thought it would be the right time to post this and see if the prophecy was indeed fulfilled! On hindsight, I doesn't seem to be one of Mallya's best ventures. Oh well, there's always Season II.

So BRING...IT...ON!!!

Bangalore Royal Challengers – IPL Dark Horses or Twenty20 Misfits?

- Siddarth Shetty

Vijay Mallya. Member of Parliament. Beer Baron. King of the skies. Head honcho of a Formula 1 team. There have been several superlatives used to describe India’s entrepreneur extraordinaire. His business sense, they say, is second to none. His knack for taking risks and pulling them off with panache is something that is admired the world over. And now he is about to tread unfamiliar territory again. Owner of the Bangalore Royal Challengers.

On the face of it, the Bangalore Royal Challengers seem to be a group of immensely talented Test cricketers. I stress on the word ‘Test’ because most of the players in the team are 5-day cricket specialists. Cricket idols like Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Shivnarive Chanderpaul, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Wasim Jaffer and Sunil Joshi are, without a doubt, more well-known for their histrionics in the longer version of the game than the ODIs. Why then, would a shrewd businessman like Vijay Mallya pick such a team to represent him on as big a stage as the IPL promises to be? The answer to that question is the fact that the Bangalore Royal Challengers is an amalgam of veterans and hotshot rookies alike.

The Bangalore Royal Challengers also have some exciting young cricketers like Nathan Bracken, Misbah-ul-Haq, Ross Tayor, Mark Boucher and Virat Kohli to provide the kind of fireworks that is commonplace in 20-20 matches. Vijay Mallya and Rahul Dravid have undoubtedly put their minds together and thought hard to decide who exactly plays for their team. According to Dravid’s theory, a batsman who excels in Test cricket should not have any problem adapting to any other form of the game; be it ODIs or Twenty20. But after his own recent performance against the South Africans (With a Strike Rate of less than 40, albeit in a Test match), even the staunch Bangalore supporters will be questioning the choice of players selected to play for the Royal Challengers.

Whether or not the Bangalore Royal Challengers will prove to be the IPL dark horses or just Twenty20 misfits, only time will tell. A glimpse of what can be expected from the team can be seen when they take on Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkota Knight Riders on the BRC home-ground in the inaugural match of the DLF Indian Premier League.