Hello Cricket Lovers,
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Indian Premier League's Second leg is set to start from Nineteenth of this month in United Arab Emirates with Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai being the selected venues to host the remaining 31 matches of the IPL tournament.
The teams have already in UAE and serving the mandatory quarantine and with 2 more days to go for the tournament to start, let's see the changes for each teams along with each teams fortunes with changed venues.
Let's see the details of changes in players for DD, CSK and RCB in this blog as they were the top 3 teams in points table when the play was stopped due to CoVid back in May 2021.
Delhi Capitals:
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Delhi Capitals were the more consistent team along with Chennai Superkings during the First leg and with some of the players pulling out due to bio bubble there are other players who have been roped in and let's see the details here.
DC have lost out the services of Chris Woakes their main all-rounder along with 2 uncapped Indian players in Anirudh Joshi and M Siddharth and these 3 have been replaced by Ben Dwarshuis, the Australian left arm pacer will be the likely replacement for Chris Woakes although it has to be seen whether he gets a chance in the presence of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje.
The other 2 replacements will be in the form of DC's former captain Shreyas Iyer and former RCB bowler Kulwant Khejroliya.
DC may not play the 2 bowlers, but Shreyas Iyer will be a sure starter and most probably will be slotted in Third or Fourth position to have 2 foreign players Steve Smith and Shimron Hetmyer to play around him.
DC are sitting pretty at the top and couple of wins will assure them a place in playoffs.
Chennai Super Kings:
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Chennai Super Kings made a strong comeback after their worst show in IPL 2020 and they are in Second position as they go into UAE leg.
It was in UAE last year, the CSK team kept losing matches and they will hope that was just something they will put behind and continue their good show this time.
CSK haven't lost many players due to bio bubble issues as they have to just replace Jason Behrendorff with Josh Hazlewood and rest of the team is as per previous one which played in India.
CSK's batting revolves around their opening pair of Ruthuraj Gaikwad and Faf Du Plessis and they will also depend on Moeen Ali and Ravindra Jadeja along with Suresh Raina as middle order batsmen.
CSK is full of allrounders with Moeen, Jadeja being 2 of them along with Sam Curran, Dwayne Bravo and the new Indian all-rounder Shardul Thakur and Depak Chahar as some of the players who will start in playing XI.
With MS Dhoni not among the runs in First leg, they will be hoping that, he comes up with some good scores to boost his confidence and once he starts doing that, nobody can stop CSK from winning another title.
Royal Challengers Bangalore:
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Royal Challengers Bangalore had started very well in Indian leg, but lost out couple of matches which hit their net run rate to make them stay at Third position.
RCB will have a set of new players in exciting Singapore player Tim David, Two Sri Lankan allrounders Wanindu Hasaranga and Dushamntha Chameera, English allrounder George Garton and Indian spinner Akash Deep will be replacing Kane Richardson, Finn Allen, Adam Zampa, Daniel Sams and Washington Sundar who are either pulled out or injured.
Tim David made a great mark in just concluded Caribbean Premier League although it will be hard for to make it to the playing XI in heavily packed RCD batting unit with the likes of AB De Villiers, Glenn Maxwell, Kyle Jamieson as sure starters, so it might be a tossup between him and Wanindu Hasaranga and who knows, he may get some games to showcase his power hitting at a later stage.
RCB's batting is their strength with captain Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal giving them good starts and they have Glenn Maxwell and AB De Villiers in the middle order followed by allrounders Shahbaz Ahmed, kyle Jamieson to follow with new recruit Wanindu Hasaranga may be getting the nod as UAE's pitches may support spinners.
Overall, RCB's team looks more balanced and if they get good starts, AB and Maxwell can blast from First ball they face to give their more beleaguered bowling unit a defending total.
That's all right now from me, I will be back with 3 more team's reviews later today and finally, we can wrap it up with remaining 2 teams on the day of IPL's First match on Nineteenth.
So, which team will you be cheering for? Me, once an RCBian, always an RCBian :)