As the Bangalore Royal Challengers sunk to yet another defeat in the tournament, the question “What Next?” needs to be asked of the captain of the RC. There is something not right with the team. You can just tell this by watching the performance of the team. The biggest thing I have is that the team doesn’t seem to have the “cohesiveness”. The players don’t seem to be very comfortable with each other. One obvious evidence of this is the discouragingly high number of confused run calls. Another indicator is when the team celebrates a wicket. They just get together - They’re not talking. Today, the camera repeatedly went to the Royal Challenger’s player stand, and they were all sitting quietly like they were watching an opera or something.
Compare this to the Chennai Team. Dhoni has managed to bring together the team quite well - They were all huddled up and cheering after every win. These things just show in the body language.
Secondly, a lot of people, especially in the blogosphere, have started questioning Dravid’s ability to lead the team. To start off with, the team selection itself seems suspect. Is Joshi really better than Misbah? What about Dravid himself? Also, why can’t they find a workable opening combination?
Moral must be pretty down after this match. The Royal Challengers desperately need an alternate strategy. More importantly, they all need to get together, admit that they’ve been doing a crappy job, and start to play together like a team. They’ll have to make some difficult decisions, but these need to be done.
Ross Taylor is leaving the team (along with all the New Zealanders) after todays game to go and play in England. That will hopefully open up the slot for Misbah. With the Chennai and Kings XI teams loosing significant power after the Australians have left, the Bangalore Royal Challengers should take up this opportunity and put up some points on the board.
What a tournament this IPL has turned out so far. The two costliest teams, the Mumbai Indians and Bangalore Royal Challengers, are languishing at the bottom of the table, with 4 losses in 5 games. There was some interesting discussion yesterday that a team may be able to go into the semis with even 7 wins, so all hope is not lost yet. But these two teams will have to pick up their game significantly to make this happen.
