IPL 2018 – Everything you need to know
What better start to an article than saying “The IPL is here”. I know I’m overstating it and you’ve probably heard or read it somewhere else but, this season, in many ways is IPL 2.0. It doesn’t take eyes of an eagle to notice that most of the teams have decided to go back to their roots. While Gautam Gambhir publicly acknowledged the fact that he desired to move back to Delhi Daredevils, Rajasthan Royals were successful in getting Shane Warne as their mentor. We are also back to the original 8 teams, teams from cities which kickstarted the IPL in 2008.
Whether it was Kagiso Rabada’s misguided aggression which nearly saw him getting banned for 2 Tests or whether it was the ball-tampering scandal that shook the world like a 8.0 earthquake, we had our fair share of ‘masala’ entertainment. Now, I’d like to say “let’s get back to cricket”, but, we all know how that would turn out. Despite that, this season of IPL brings about a sense of freshness in everyone, fans and players alike. Everyone is expecting clean, fresh and hard cricket to be played over the next 7 weeks.
Every IPL season brings with itself a lot of excitement. The excitement is experienced in various forms – new players, players going back to old franchisees, players debuting for new franchisees, return of last year’s star performers among others. Over the years, we have seen that the IPL tends to pick up right where it left off in the previous season. Let’s hope that the case is similar this year too, so that we get to witness a thrilling IPL season.
Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals are probably the 2 most liked franchisees in the IPL. And they make a comeback this year. Despite a 2-year hiatus, these teams won’t have much time to get off the blocks. CSK, predictably, have retained much of their core, with as many as 6 players returning from the squad of 2015. The royals, too, seem to have retained their trusted men. What works for Royals’ is the fact that for a young and aggressive team, they have an experienced and equally aggressive mentor. Ideally, Steve Smith would have been the perfect choice to lead the team under the guidance of Shane Warne, and for some time, it was made possible too. However, with Ajinkya Rahane at the helm, it wouldn’t be much of a difference in approach and strategies.
Steve Smith, David Warner, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Santner, Kagiso Rabada and Nathan Coulter-Nile are the players who will be missing out on IPL action this year. These are some pretty big names and the unavailability of each of these players means a huge setback for their respective franchisees. What happens in the auction is that franchisees have their strategies regarding a player and they spend the money on them accordingly. Case in point, KKR suffer a huge setback as they invested 9.4 crore on Mitchell Starc in the auction because of which they couldn’t invest much in other players. Although KKR get 9.4 crores in their kitty and can name a replacement from the pool of available players, they lost the chance of making other buys in the auction owing to lack of funds during the auction. But, isn’t that what makes the IPL all the more risky and exciting! Other missing persons are Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell who miss the first few games when the former gets married and the latter is his best man. Let’s hope Aaron comes back with new found explosiveness in his batting.
There are many returns this year. CSK and RR return after their 2-year bans. Consequently, MS Dhoni returns as a captain of CSK (we get to see MS captain any team after 2 years). Shane Warner returns to Rajasthan Royals as a mentor. Andre Russell returns to IPL after a 1-year ban. Gautam Gambhir returns to Delhi Daredevils, as a player and as a captain.
Let’s take a moment to congratulate the new captains of this season. Ravichandran Ashwin was bought by Kings XI Punjab for 7.6 crores and surprisingly was named the captain of the team. The other 2 captains are not the first-choice captains of their respective franchisees. Ajinkya Rahane and Kane Williamson were named the captains of RR and SRH respectively only after Steve Smith and David Warner were banned from participating in this IPL. While Ajinkya and Kane have captained RR and SRH before, Ashwin is completely new to IPL captaincy, not having captained even a single match. We wish all the best to these new full-time captains.
There’s plenty of excitement surrounding the newcomers this year. Lots of big bucks were spent on them and expectations on most of them are pretty high. D’Arcy Short and Jofra Archer made the headlines for their explosive performances for the Hobart Hurricanes in the recent BBL. Owing to that, they made big money in the auction as both of them were purchased by the double R’s. Another newcomer is Star India, the new broadcasters of VIVO IPL. After 10 years, we finally see a change in broadcaster, which comes as a good news for Sooryavansham fans; now they get to watch Sooryavansham during IPL.
What’s common between Washington Sundar, Rashid Khan, Jaydev Unadkat, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav? All of them return to this year’s IPL with new found success in the international arena. Expectations from them have increased as has their salaries. We hope these youngsters live up to the expectations and do justice to their price tags and reputation.
We have some interesting match-ups between teams lined up this year; some old ones and some new ones. Obviously, CSK vs MI and CSK vs RR go way back. The rivalry resumes this season as we finally get to see some yellow on the field. In the newer match-ups, we have for you DD vs KKR where Gautam Gambhir will be playing against his former team where he found the most success. Next on the menu is CSK vs KXIP where we shall see Ravichandran Ashwin playing for an IPL team which is not CSK for the first time. Not only will he be playing against his former franchisee, he will be the captain of his new franchisee. RR vs SRH is next on the menu and I say it is going to be interesting because both these teams have suffered huge setbacks which were not because of injuries.
Needless to say that every season of IPL brings a lot of excitement in everyone. This year, we some major changes in the way IPL will be played and I am not talking about new jersey designs (it always takes time for us to get used to the new jerseys). For the first time in the IPL, we will see DRS and mid-season transfers. This means less faulty decisions and players warming the bench for one franchisee finding another franchisee to play for in the mid-season. The rule is fairly basic and states that uncapped players who have not played more than 2 games in the current season can be transferred within a 5-day window.
Delhi and Rajasthan decided to go to their roots. Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad stuck with their winning formula. Kolkata, Punjab and Bangalore made major overhauls in their roster in hope of turning their fortunes. Every team, every player, every support staff member, every presenter, every performer and every official is busy with preparation and execution of the IPL. So, what do WE have in store for you? Well, we have for you a line of images which covers everything you’ll need to know before the IPL. We have the SWOT analysis of every team along with a Key Player and a Prediction. We have the probable and best suitable playing XI’s of every team by 3 members, each with different thinking patterns. We have the complete roster of support staff for every team. We also have the week-wise schedule of the complete tournament. With these, you can get yourself on par with the pre-IPL happenings and maybe pick your team of the season. In making these images, new reinforcements were recruited to carefully draft and verify the design. You can look at images from last year here and compare them with this year. What we have attempted is we have kept the design of the images reminiscent of this year’s IPL – fresh, trendy, rejuvenating and 2.0. We sincerely hope that these images are informative to you and that you share them.
Without any further ado, here are the images.
SWOT Analysis
Mihir Vohra’s Playing XI
Samrat Darda’s Playing XI
Yash Mehta’s Playing XI
Rosters
Schedule
