It can't get more interesting. Kolkata vs Bangalore and Rahul Dravid vs Sourav Ganguly. Close on the heels of the announcement that Ganguly is all set to lead the Shah Rukh Khan-owned Kolkata side, comes the news that Dravid is all set to captain Vijay Mallya's Bangalore in the opening match of the Indian Premier League that is set to unveil under lights at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on April 18.
Though a formal announcement is awaited, Bangalore team's CEO-designate Charu Sharma confirmed that the former India skipper, who is an 'Icon Player' in the league, would lead the side. "I have spoken to Rahul and he will lead the side. Everyone looks up to him and an icon player has to lead the side. We are discussing player recruitment with him. He is not in town now but when he is back, we will have more discussions on our team composition," Charu said.
On the composition of the team, Charu, while admitting that all other teams too would want to have the same players (mainly Australians), the open auction might make it difficult for teams to have all their desired players on board.
"Our wish-list for players will be the same as what Sourav (Ganguly) has said about the team he wants. Since this is a Twenty20 format and you need those big-moment players, I would ideally want to have all the Australians in the side. I would love to have some clever and quick bowlers. But since it's an open auction and if we don't play our options well, we might end up with nothing, so we got to be careful about whom we bid for," explained Charu.
Australians are obviously in everyone's wish-list, but there is still doubt over the availability of players from Down Under due to conflict of interest with their team's sponsors. While Cricket Australia is moving at a snail's pace in resolving the issue, IPL Chairperson and Commissioner Lalit Modi has set coming Sunday as the deadline for the Aussies to sign the contract papers. In the event the Australian players miss out on the inaugural edition, the tournament rules bar them from appearing in the league for three years. The players bid will open on February 20.
The franchisees will also have to keep in mind certain stipulations while deciding the composition of the team; such as a team can have a maximum of four foreign players and four under-22 players from the catchment areas of the team. Bangalore can pick players from only Karnataka, Goa and Services, which are its designated catchment areas. And as Charu says, Bangalore are a bit hampered by the limited pool of players at their disposal. So they will be forced to focus more on Karnataka. Test skipper Anil Kumble and dashing batsman Robin Uthappa are the other prominent players from Karnataka who are on the Bangalore team's radar.
Meanwhile, KSCA secretary Brijesh Patel said the IPL officials visited the Chinnaswamy stadium to inspect the facilities. Brijesh added that as a staging association, KSCA would get 20 percent of the tickets for each match to issue to its members. "Those tickets will not be on sale," he said.
