The Royal Challengers' king size problems

Written by Jarrod Kimber

Wednesday, 07 May 2008

Bangalore were the obvious team to fall apart in the IPL.

They spent too much on players who are not T20 players, and then played their non performing players ahead of the only two T20 players they have.

Their captain, and main selector, is a dinosaur.

I love Rahul Dravid.

Back in his day the boy could bat the house down.

The IPL is long removed from his day.

Now he is a plodder. Not even a probot, he is just a middle order test batsman who refuses to play shots or go out.

But as a one day batsman, or as a T20 batsman, he is a non event.

As a T20 captain, he is a disaster.

The team has no vision, no attacking instincts, and are only called a “team” because they all wear the same uniform.

But all this is the fault of whoever picked Dravid as Icon, I’m assuming Vijay Mallya, the owner.

What is Dravid’s fault is the team selection , Kallis, Jaffer, Kumble, and Chandrepaul.

He picked teams who could never play against proper T20 teams.

So that is why Dravid should have been fired before the CEO.

Or dropped.

Cameron White is in the squad, he is the captain of the best T20 domestic team in the world.

He is also a far better T20 batsman than Dravid.

The next major mistake was whoever kept Misbah Ul Haq out of the team.

Misbah came into the side late, but the team was already horrible, he had to be the first player picked.

Instead he was kept on the bench for 2 games.

Who made that mistake?

So to recap.

Vijay Mallya, should sell the team for screwing up in the first place, he should sell it to a Russian mafia billionaire.

Rahul Dravid should step down for not being up to it as captain or batsman, and should retire gracefully, before people remember him as the nervous looking dude who can’t score for hours.

And whoever left Misbah out of the team should be fired, and possibly spanked.

So like all professional sports teams they fired the CEO, who I assume had little to do with any of these mistakes.

Coach, next, manager after that.

(Jarrod can also be found at www.cricketwithballs.com. Click here to know more about him)

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Jaideep - Bang this lore

Unregistered | 2008-05-08 02:17:06

Bangalore is an easy target, so it would help to not over-react on this. They have been unimpressive no doubt, but the standard criticism that their fielding a test team is responsible for their debacle is a cliche that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Jaffer and Dravid have played a couple of excellent innings, Chanderpaul has a history of explosive innings, as does Mark Boucher. With Kohli and White in that mix, it is not a team lacking in firepower or balance. And Kallis, Misbah, Praveen Kumar (with the bat) have heardly pulled their weight. What has been more disappointing is the team's lack of chemistry and clarity of intent. Dravid has to be responsible for that, and one does feel that his very formidable legacy is being hurt by his mindset in the last few months. He is still in a somewhat tentative mode, which is suicide in T20. But Dravid is not an ordinary cricketer, and it would be surprising if he does not lift himself and his team out of this mess in the second half of this year's IPL. The bigger challenge for him might be to prevent the insecure corporate culture of his team owner's company to permeate his way of functioning. But this corporate-led "money and quick results are all" culture will affect more than a few people.

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jrod	Unregistered \| 2008-05-12 07:55:04

Jaideep, I think the first mistake was picking a side that did not have enough 2020 players.

You say Jaffer and Dravid are going ok with the bat, i would disagree, but they have been better than Jacques and Kumar.

But i think the bigger mistakes have been the fact that Jacques has been kept in the side on nothing more than reputation, and Dravid is captain for the same reason.

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Jaideep - Conceded, mostly

Unregistered | 2008-05-14 00:33:44

Jrod, you've been vindicated now, I guess. But I still think Jaffer and especially Dravid went ok with the bat. Dravid in fact has been consistently scoring at a decent strike rate too. Somehow the others have not delivered. Yes, they didn't have a typical T20 selection, which is why it would have great if they'd pulled off a good show in the tournament - it would have actually changed parameters and upturned a cliche, now it has just strengthened it, which is never as exciting, is it? As a captain, Dravid does seem to be out of his depth here, that has to be conceded. Sad.

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