South African batsman Graeme Smith, opener for Rajasthan Royals has been ruled out of the Final on Sunday due to a hamstring injury. Smith who was quite fit on the field was injured during the semi-finals with Delhi Daredevils yesterday.
Shane Warne is considering either Yunus Khan or Kamran Akmal to open in the finals with Swapnil Asnodkar. However, Khan with only one IPL match in which he scored three runs and Akmal with five matches (avg 30) is no match to Smith but everyone is aware how Warney handles his players and install confidence in them.
Shane also acknowledged Smith’s role in shaping up the teams success. Smith has scored a total of 441 runs (11 matches) with an average close to 49 and is considered as one of the strongest opening pair along with Swapnil.
Indian Premier League Match Preview – Semi final 2
Kings XI Punjab Vs Chennai Super Kings
Semi final 2 is to be played between the teams which stood at the second and third positions in the league.
The Armies – Kings XI Punjab v Chennai Super Kings
Kings XI Punjab with 20 points stood at the top of the league winning 10 of their 14 matches.Delhi Daredevils qualified by grabbing the third. They were victorious in 8 of their 14 matches. They ended on 16 points.
The Battleground – Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai
Wankhede always has purchase for spinners and there was enough encouragement for spinners in the first semi final.
Rajasthan Royals is a team which was virtually written off by all Cricket Guru’s in the initial stages of the Indian Premier League (IPL) just after the auction . Even Lalit Modi was not too happy with the amounts spend for acquiring Crickets in the auction as his expectations were high given the financial clout of Lalchan Murdock - an heir of the billion dollar star TV / Fox Tv empire and son of Media Moghul Rupert Murdoch. Rajastnan Royals remained a passive observer of the ignorant hype of bollywood kings and badshah’s and million dollar splash from the Ambanis and the Mallaya’s.
Indian Premier League (IPL) performance fianlly got Yusuf Pathan and Pragyan Ojha earn berths in the one-day match sqad in the Indian National Team for the tri-series in Bangladesh starting next month as also in the Asia-Cup in Pakistan.
Selectors held a meeting at Mumbai on Friday and decided on a much young squad for both the tournaments and dropped older player Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. Earlier the duo was also ignored for the one-day team during the recently concluded triangular series in Australia.
Indian Premier League has taken everybody by storm. The amount of fresh talent that’s been exposed would lead people to believe that there may be many new faces in team India. But the fact of the matter is that, only 15 or 16 players can be selected in the team and the players who were already there and there about have performed really well. There might be just a few inclusions in the batting and in the spin bowling departments.
Looking at the eight teams and the Indian players who have been the best in each its interesting to find that they are already in the national team.
