• While Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians have been blazing a trail with their performances, another team has also been going about its business in a quiet, unobtrusive manner.

     

    The Deccan Chargers really seem to have hit upon a winning formula that gives them an incredible record if you look at their performance over their last 15 games, starting late in IPL-II and continuing into IPL-III. Adam Gilchrist's men would start as overwhelming favourites against Shane Warne's resurgent Royals.

     

    Full credit to Rajasthan for having turned the corner with two good wins. I thought Kings XI Punjab would have the edge after their incredible win over Chennai, but even that has not instilled any momentum or confidence in the side.

     

    The Royals on the other hand seem to have discovered some batting form, especially with the induction of Adam Voges. His good form has also helped Shane by making Yusuf Pathan play with a sense of freedom.

     

    In the first few games it was as though the

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  • The team was rightly pleased with what was a thoroughly professional performance by the Mumbai Indians the other night against Kolkata Knight Riders. The seven-wicket win was the result of good planning and superb execution by the bowlers.

     

    All teams have game plans but what was really special was the way the bowlers stuck so well to our strategy. Chris Gayle made a fifty and was their highest scorer but he was becalmed right throughout his innings and was never able to cut loose.

     

    Credit for that should be shared among all the bowlers but I thought Lasith (Malinga) bowled really well to Chris, as he has done in the past for Sri Lanka. The strategy of keeping the ball full at the Brabourne Stadium also worked really well.

     

    Sachin (Tendulkar) led the run chase with customary authority. Our plan is simple, we want him to bat right through and the rest of us are supposed to bat around him. The fact that he is scoring at such a great rate meant we won comfortably.

     

    In Thursday night's

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  • Thanks to the telecast of the Indian Premier League games in Bangladesh, I have caught most of the games played by Delhi Daredevils. It was great to see them getting off to a good start, with two straight wins, but the three successive losses thereafter have been a bit of a dampener.

     

    The IPL is yet to see a team with an all-win record, so the most important factor for a team is to overcome these inevitable slumps.

     

    It's clear that we are a high-quality team and even though we have been hit by the absence of Gautam Gambhir, we have a very strong bench.

     

    I hate to be critical of my mates, especially since I am not there as yet, but perhaps we just haven't been able to close out games well enough.

     

    Players like Tillakaratne Dilshan, AB De Villiers, Dinesh Karthik, David Warner and of course the fearsome Virender Sehwag make for the most formidable batting line-up in the IPL, so once one of these guys steps up to the plate and gets the team across, momentum will be restored.

     

    T20

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