Their bench strength is the strongest among all the teams in Ipl. They don’t have a place for Uthappa, Cameron White, Mark Boucher, Dale Steyn etc. in the playing eleven. Probably they will rotate these players during their hectic schedule. Vijay Mallaya is a greedy man and he would want his team to win all the matches.

KEY PLAYERS: Bangalore will miss Ross Taylor during the first half of the tournament. He was Royal challengers’ most consistent performer during 2^nd edition. But the presence of Kevin Peterson and Eoin Morgan will surely strengthen their batting. Anil Kumble’s four overs would make all the difference in their bowling Department. Young Manish Pandey and Virat Kohli are assets to Challengers’ campaign.

PROBABLE PLAYING ELEVEN: Jacques Kallis, Manish Pandey, Rahul Dravid, Kevin Peterson, Eoin Morgan, Virat Kohli, Srivats Goswami (WK), Reolf Van Der Merwe, Praveen Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Anil Kumble (Capt).

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After doing reasonably well in the 1^st edition of the Ipl, Punjab failed to impress during the 2^nd Edition. As a result of that, Preity Zinta and Co have appointed Kumar Sangakarra as the captain. Though Yuvraj Singh did well as a captain, he failed to make an impact with the bat. Sacking of Captaincy post will surely ignite Yuvi’s batting fire power. He’ll certainly think he has something to prove and in the process the team will gain in one way or the other.

On paper, Kings Eleven team looks very balanced. They have many Indian Quality bowlers. Hence they can strengthen their batting with foreigners. They heavily depend on Australian and Sri Lankan players. Australian Players’ unavailability and injuries for some key players were the reason for their sluggish second season. With the new Captain and new ideas surely they are one of the contenders for the top 4 finish and Champions League qualification.

KEY PLAYERS:

Former Skipper Yuvraj Singh is the most important player of Kings Eleven Punjab. Yuvi and Sangakarra form a formidable middle order. Especially, Sanga is in the form of his life and he’ll have a crucial role to play. No one should expect Shaun Marsh to play like the way he did in the inaugural season. But still he is a solid player at the top and will give consistent starts. Brett Lee and Sreesanth’s wicket taking abilities will shake any batting order.

Shaun Marsh, Karan Goel, Kumar Sangakarra (Captain & WK), Yuvraj Singh, Mahella Jayawardane, Mohammed kaif, Irfan Pathan, Brett Lee, Piyush Chawla, Ramesh Powar, Santhakumara Sreesanth.

POSITIVES: Strong Batting, Quality bowlers, Experienced players.

NEGATIVES: Weak bench strength, Handling pressure, Australian players dependent.

The bottom line is the team has all the capabilities to go till the end but their inability to win crunch games will affect them during the later stages of the tournament.

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The defending champions start their campaign with a huge set back after Ipl governing body moved all their home matches out of Hyderabad. Having said that, this would prove to be a blessing in disguise. Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad, has hosted 12 matches and in all those 12 matches home teams (India & Deccan Chargers) have lost. This is one of the main reasons for their bad performance during the first season.

Chargers had a miserable first season winning just 2 out of 14 matches. During the second season the punters did not put money on them. But surprisingly they turned the tables by winning the cup. Thanks to Fiedel Edwards’ heroics during the start of the season and Adam Gilchrist’s red-hot form during the later stages of the tournament.

KEY PLAYERS:

As always, chargers will be banking heavily on their skipper Adam Gilchrist. The momentum of Chargers’ batting depends on Gilly’s performance. They have a very strong middle order with the likes of Andrew Symonds and Rohit Sharma. All these 3 batsmen are the contenders for the Orange Cap. They have the weakest bowling attack in the tournament. They heavily depend on R. P. Singh, Pragyan Ojha and Edwards. Of late, these 3 bowlers are out of form and struggling to find a place in their respective national teams. Also they don’t have other bowlers to back these three bowlers.

PROBABLE PLAYING ELEVEN:

Adam Gilchrist (Capt & Wk), VVS Laxman, Thirumalsetti Suman, Andrew Symonds, Rohit Sharma, Dwayne Smith, Venugopal Rao, Ravi Teja, Fiedel Edwards, R.P. Singh, Pragyan ojha

POSITIVES: Talismanic Skipper, middle order, batting all-rounders.

NEGATIVES: Fragile Bowling attack, fielding, lower order batting.

The bottom line is Chargers’ will find it very difficult to reach top 4 as all of their key players are dreadfully out of form and their bowling looks vulnerable.

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God wanted to play cricket, so Sachin was born! Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar smashed an unbeaten double ton during the 2^nd Odi against South Africa in Gwalior taking Indian score to 401/3. Double century in an Odi was the one record which eluded from his Arsenal. But now even that record is in his bag. In the course of achieving this mark, he broke world record for individual score of 194 made by Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar and Zimbabwe’s Charles Coventry. Sachin, at the age of 36, has once again proved to the world that age has nothing to do with performance!

He started his innings in a conventional manner. Once he got settled in, he smashed proteas’ bowlers all around the park. Especially, his cover drives, flicks and pull shots were awesome. Even, one of the world’s best bowlers, Dale Steyn was made to look like a Joker in front of Sachin. He played all the shots in the book. Karthik and Dhoni gave him good company. But he was stranded on 199 for around two overs when Dhoni cut loose. It was a good lesson for the youngsters like Raina and kohli. I’m really proud to have witnessed that mind boggling innings from the Little Master. This is one knock which all Cricket fans will not forget until their life time.

Histories are meant to be broken. Am sure this record will be broken in the future. But no one would reach that mark in the class and style by which Sachin did it. Only the Passion that he has for the game of cricket makes him to achieve these numerous milestones. Let’s hope he breaks Lara’s record of 400* in Test match cricket before retiring from international cricket. Master you rock, Hats off! Keep going!!!!!

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India will host 2010 Hockey world cup which will be held from February 28 to March 13. All the matches will take place at Dhyan Chand National Stadium at Delhi. South Africa, Korea, England, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Canada, Pakistan, New Zealand, Argentina and India are the twelve teams participating in that event. Teams are divided into 2 pools, at the end of the group stage 4 teams get qualified for the semi finals. Winners of semis get qualified for finals which will take place on March 13.

Though Hockey is our National game, many people are not aware of the World Cup. Our media is following each and every move of IPL and Cricket, but it does not give any news about Hockey World Cup. Hockey’s situation is very bad that Cricketers are advertising people to watch Hockey. They also gave money and helped hockey board, when they were in crisis. We should not forget that we were the world champions a decade ago. But now our Hockey organization is in crisis. With Crowd support, let’s hope that India will win the world cup and resurrect the lost glory.

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Shah Rukh Khan is one of the famous Bollywood actors and he is the owner of the Ipl team Kolkata Knight Riders. Even though he is successful in acting, his Ipl team failed to impress. SRK wanted to include Abdul Razzak (Pak) in his team to strengthen his squad. So he said his wish overtly. Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena’s leader did not like this because he doesn’t want any Pakistan player coming to India. He called SharRukh a traitor. Shiv Sena also opposes Home Minister P. Chidambharam and central Minister Rahul Gandhi for their comments in supporting Pakistan. Earlier Sena targeted Master Blaster Sachin for his comments about Marathi people.

Sena and its supporters have decided to disrupt the screening of SRK’s latest movie ‘My Name is Khan’. They want ShahRukh to apologize for his comments. But SRK is adamant and he believes that he did not say anything wrong. He says, “India belongs to everyone and all people can come to India”. Whole India and Cinema Industry are backing Shah Rukh and they don’t see anything wrong in SRK’s statement.

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Dhoni is the first captain in 132 years of test history, not to have lost first eleven matches as the skipper of national team. No captain has ever managed to accomplish this. He achieved this rare feat after defeating the Bangla Tigers in the 2^nd test match, surpassing Warwick Armstrong (Australia) who had not lost 10 matches in a row. India won 8 test matches and drew 3 test matches under his captaincy. Two test victories each against Australia and Sri Lanka & one victory each against New Zealand, England, South Africa and Bangladesh.

But this winning spree came to an end when team South Africa defeated India at Nagpur in the first test that too by huge margin, courtesy Amla and Dale Steyn. India can find many reasons for this defeat as the world’s no 1 team missed many of its key players such as Dravid, Laxman, Yuvraj and Sreesanth due to injuries. Now Dhoni cannot extend this record but we fans can hope that this is just a hiccup, with many more victories to come under his leadership.

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