 The
first game of the third edition of the Indian Premier League will be
played between the Deccan Chargers and the Kolkata Knight Riders. The
match will be played at the Dr. D Y Patil ground, after security concerns back
in Hyderabad pushed the game out of Chargers' home town. The game will be immediately
preceded by an opening ceremony.
Sourav Ganguly has been quoted in the papers to be very happy with the kind
of team he has, but most so because of the presence of some raw pace in his
side. He is not too far off the mark, as the likes of Shane Bond, Ishant
Sharma, Ajit Agarkar, Ashok Dinda and some of the youngsters like Varun Aaron
will be the players to look out for. Luckily, a lot of these guys are Indians
and so will make it to the team without any problems that the foreign players
could face because of the four foreign player rule.
Click Here to Watch Deccan
Chargers vs Kolkata Knight Riders Live
The batting also lies in safe hands, as the Knight Riders will have the likes
of Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Ganguly and Brad Hodge at the top of
the order to be able to make the batting a success. One gets the feeling that
the biggest headache that the captain Ganguly will have is in choosing the four
foreign players in the side.
The Deccan Chargers will go in with Adam Gilchrist to lead the side,
and will definitely have Andrew Symonds, his mate from Australia featuring in
the line-up. Of course, there are others like Rohit Sharma and Venugopal Rao
who will love to make it count from the very beginning so that they do not lose
their spot to the youngsters, but the one batsman that everyone will miss is
Scot Styris, who will join the team late as he is in New Zealand playing in
the ODIs.
Fidel Edwards' absence to injury will be overcome by the presence of Kemar Roach, another of the pace bowlers who can frighten even the best of the
batsmen through sheer pace.
In the first edition of the tournament, Kolkata won both the games against a
hapless Deccan Chargers. However, the defending champions Chargers got their
revenge back in the second edition in which they won both the games as well.
Hence, this game could decide who goes up 3-2 in the head to head. It will be
interesting who does, because the Knight Riders will have a new captain in Sourav Ganguly, who will know that it is now or never for the side!
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