A new captain makes a difference

Well for the past three editions of the Indian Premier League, the Kings XI Punjab team was captained by Yuvraj Singh which was never re-considered for any reasons despite them failing miserably in the last two editions. The loss need not be attributed to the only fact that Yuvraj Singh was the captain but, if the fate of the Pune Warriors is considered, then too a similar sort of attitude becomes clear. In the game against the Mumbai Indians, we had written regarding lack of captaining skills of Yuvraj Singh when he handed the ball to Murali Karthik and Parnell when Rohith Sharma would have done a better job.

However, in this edition, the team is captained by a a player who himself has proved to be a successful captain in the recently concluded world cup when he took his team to the finals of the mega event. This time, in the IPL, the Kings XI Punjab have registered two comprehensive wins which at present stand apart from the rest. The Kings XI team have chased down successfully 188 against Chennai Super Kings and recorded a score of 195 yesterday against Rajasthan Royals at Mohali. The feats have come against teams which have a history of winning the IPL.

In the first innings, if not for the top four, the rest came just to walk out minutes later. The scoreboard at one stage read 175/3 by the end of 16 overs which eventually went on to become 195/7 with the last four overs yielding just 20 runs at the rate of just 5.0 an over. One can sense the lack of scoring by the middle order batsmen which can prove crucial in matches yet to come when the top order fails unlike what happened yesterday. Needless to be said, both team lost 7 wickets and the Rajasthan Royals stood frozen at 147.

As it has always been the case in the IPL this year, the losing team brings in 7 bowlers to bowl and the Rajasthan Royals' captain-Shane Warne was no different yesterday. But, if at all his experimenting is to be considered, then one has to look at the scorecard to fins Shane Warne allowing four bowlers to complete their quota and the remaining four overs were divided between 3 bowlers. Was Shane Warne making full use of his bowlers or was he forced to give at least one over to those bowlers? It was nice see Warne getting belted for a 50.