Its a busy season!

(a review of Bangalore Royal Challengers and options that they could look at for the future)

Its a busy season for followers of cricket and politics with the IPL and the elections currently going on, and the T20 World Cup to follow. I've been busy catching up on both IPL and all the political news. 

I gave up on the MSMs long back to get my dose of the daily news. I'm sick and tired of watching news that the MSM wants me to watch, while depriving me of news that I should know. These days I keep track of events only through selective web-sites & blogs. These give me news that I want to know and that which I believe is true. 

One of the my favourite sources is Offstumped. Apart from the incisive postings that the author (Yossarin) makes, the comments section of the blog serves as a discussion forum for many nationalist patrons. I feel I'm politically more aware and awake than I have ever been, thanks to this blog. 

Thankfully, cricket is not politicised yet. So, I can still safely rely on the TV for my share of entertainment. The Bangalore Royal Challengers managed to win two on a trot and are now placed relatively higher in the standings, though they have played an extra match compared to some of the other teams. But two in a row was a pleasant surprise. I'm still pinching myself pretty hard!! Ouch!!!

Actually, the team is nowhere as bad as their performance till now suggested. It just seems to be a problem of everything clicking together. Some of the lost matches have been pretty close, and in two of their matches, at least one of their bowlers leaked runs when the opposition needed around 50 from 30. 

I'm hoping now that they go on and better their last season's performance of 4 wins. Who knows? With 4 more wins, they might even make the semis and from thereon its just a matter of 2 games! Heights of optimism!!

There are a few grey areas that can still be addressed though. One is a shortage of confident emerging Indian talent. Kohli and Goswami have shown glimpses, but need to be more consistent. The others like Bishnoi, Bhuvaneshwar, Manish Pandey, Chipli have got minimal or no opportunities at all. Confidence can only be gained in the middle and not from dressing rooms (or the dug out in this case). So, BRC (or RCB) would be doing themselves a big favour by showing some faith in these youngsters. After all, Appanna and Pankaj Singh have done reasonably well in the few matches they have played and have grown in confidence with every match.

Another area is the lack of left-handers in the middle order. The merits of having left-handed batsmen in the side has been advocated by experts many a time and can be gauged by the performance of the Indian team in the recent past. The left handers present a different set of challenges to the bowlers thereby forcing them to adjust frequently in the case of a left-right combination. BRC would do well to pinch someone like Shikar Dhawan from MI, who has been grossly under-utilised by them. They could look at the ICL players like Dinesh Mongia and Hemang Badani too, if that's an option.

They should probably let go of players like Jaffer (What was Charu thinking?), JAK and Joshi (unless he is Appanna's mentor), who are adding little value to the side. (I could be widely off the mark here, since I'm no fakeiplplayer, and am just speculating)

Lastly, they could add a few more low-profile T20 specialists from other nations. There are quite a few West Indians available like Darren Sammy, Kieron Pollard (Bowling all-rounders) and Lendl Simmons & Lionel Baker (Batting all-rounders). Australia has a few like Callum Fergusson, Phil Hughes, Marcus North and high-performers in Australia's KFC T20 big bash like Rhett Lockyear. 

They could also look to acquire Brad Haddin (I was surprised he went unsold), who would provide with captaincy options as well apart from his wicket-keeping and opening skills. With the 3 year contracts of the first batch signings ending next year, they could let go of under-achieving players like Steyn, Taylor, Kallis & Boucher (last 2 being very inconsistent).

While I'm still keeping my fingers and toes crossed for them this year, hopefully we'll see more improvements next year, ones that'll help save our finger-nails for more important events like the election results.