The Chennai Super Kings need to do in the IPL 4 final exactly what they did in the IPL 4 Qualifier 1 - beat the Royal Challengers Bangalore to lift the IPL 4 trophy and be the first IPL team to win the IPL twice.
The Chennai Super Kings will be looking to play the home advantage given that their track record at home has been ’super’ impressive. That alone should be a little intimidating to their opponents given that the Chennai crowds can really get behind their team in vociferous numbers.

However, it is what the Chennai Super Kings do on the cricket field that will ultimately decide the winner of the contest. And on the face of it, the strategy will not only be revisited but also, simple in that the Chennai Super Kings must continue their workman like spirit even as the Royal Challengers rest heavily on Chris Gayle to bring the house down.

Gayle has been in phenomenal form this Indian summer. But to repeat what Gayle did to the Mumbai Indians in the IPL 4 qualifier 2 in less than twenty-four hours will still take some doing. But nothing is beyond Gayle which is why the Chennai Super Kings will not underestimate the team that beat them in the last league match, even if the Royal Challengers Bangalore happen to be playing back to back matches for the IPL 4 trophy.

If Gayle forms the core of the RCB’s Twenty20 strategy, their bowlers and Sreenath Arvind in particular have been impressive in keeping a tight leash on things. Daniel Vettori and Zaheer Khan are looking good as well which bodes well for the former who is also the RCB captain , leading the team to their first IPL 4 final.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni continues to remain the single biggest factor in the Chennai Super Kings camp and it is not just the runs he brings to the table but also, the cool captaincy that he lends that will prove crucial if the Chennai Super Kings are to keep emotions under check as they undertake what no team in the IPL has done before.

The Chennai Super Kings have a rather well balanced team, but this time playing safe may not work. They will have to go on the offensive which may mean bring Albie Morkel, the batsman, in to greater play and going for glory in the bowling department. It is time to step up the game. Their IPL 4 season finale hinges on it.

The Chris Gayle factor was always going to be critical in how the IPL 4 Qualifier 2 was going to pan out. And indeed Chris Gayle proved yet again to be Royal Challengers Bangalore and a thorn in the flesh for the Mumbai Indians who lost the match in Chennai to send RCB into the IPL 4 final against the Chennai Super Kings.
For any team that has run into delirious succcess since the introduction of Chris Gayle, every opposition that has run into Royal Challengers Bangalore has had to make plans for Gayle if they were to stand a realistic chance of winning. Likewise, the Chennai Super Kings are in the IPL 4 final is because they were able to contain Gayle early.

The same however could not be said of the Mumbai Indians against whom the terror by the name of Gayle unleashed once more and with telling effect. His partnership with Mayank Agarwal rattled the Mumbai Indians because 113 runs came in less than eleven overs.

Lasith Malinga did not quite make the impact in terms of picking those crucial wickets for Mumbai although he was the most economical bowler by far. But Gayle’s lusty hitting proved a nightmare even for the seasoned Harbhajan Singh, punishing the Mumbai Indians at will and letting Agarwal play his own game with forty-one runs from thirty-one balls, including two sixes. When Munaf Patel did strike, the damage had already been done with the destruction of the figures of the front line bowlers.

Gayle’s individual score of eighty-nine runs from only forty-seven balls, punctuated by nine boundaries and five sixes, was the single engaging factor that tilted the game heavily in the favour of the Royal Challengers Bangalore who will feel relieved for the second opportunity to play in the IPL 4 final.

Gayle has been prolific this season since he joined the RCB team and it has hurt the teams that have come up against them. The Mumbai Indians faced the tall order of scoring 186 runs in order to make it to the final against the IPL 3 winners, the Chennai Super Kings.

A lot rested on Sachin Tendulkar, the Mumbai Indians captain, in order to overhaul this tall order. And he did contribute with forty runs. But that was before Syed Mohammad produced a gem of a delivery that foxed the maestro resulting in his being stumped. Tendulkar was the third Mumbai Indians wickets to fall on the night, and it seemed Mumbai had lost grip on the match.

And they did. The Royal Challengers Bangalore kept up the pressure on the Mumbai Indians batsmen who caved in to the pressure. Sreenath Arvind was impressive once more with his two wickets while Daniel Vettori, the RCB captain, joined the party with three wickets as well as the Mumbai Indians’ slippery road landed them at six down for eighty-nine with the wicket of Kieron Pollard.

It was not before long that the Mumbai Indians had lost the match for the record, making only 142 runs in their twenty overs to hand the Royal Challengers Bangalore a forty-three run victory to force their way into the IPL 4 final for a southern affair.

India will go into the Test series against the West Indies without both their openers and Sachin Tendulkar after what is already a depleted ODI team travelling to the Caribbean.
Sachin Tendulkar is the latest Indian cricketer to have asked to be left out entirely from India’s tour of the West Indies to spend time with his family. With Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh already ruled out for the entire length of the tour, it adds more problems for India with Virender Sehwag being the first to be written off for the tour availability with shoulder surgery.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni returns to the Test squad as the Indian captain after being rested for the ODI series as does Zaheer Khan. Instead the likes of Murali Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Subramaniam Badrinath get a look in with Parthiv Patel also named as the reserve wicket keeper.

Cheteshwar Pujara missed out through injury apparently and the Indian selectors took a long time before deciding the Test team as also, the revised team for the ODI series. Without both the regular openers and Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni will have quite a few adjustments to be made in the batting order.

Much like the ODI series, the Test squad for India also will not be a true representative of the team that is expected to be at full strength when India tour England following the West Indies assignment.

India’s Test Squad for the West Indies:
Test squad: MS Dhoni (capt), VVS Laxman (vc), M Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel

Following the brouhaha revolving around fresh injuries, Suresh Raina, not Gautam Gambhir will captain India in the ODIs and Twenty20 series against the West Indies after the IPL 4.
Shikar Dhawan and Manoj Tiwary come in as replacement for Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh, the latter pulling out this morning over a lung infection. The absence of these two players - Gambhir was even named the Indian captain - will greatly weaken the team that was already missing seven big Indian cricketers when the Indians selectors first announced the ODI squad for the West Indies series.

Suresh Raina will have the opportunity to lead the team although the team at his disposal will miss virtually all the prominent names barring the likes of Harbhajan Singh and Virat Kohli. In that sense, for Raina it may be a challenge but not a hugely enticing prospect for the already fatigued Indian fans who have foregone the bulk of the IPL 4 season.

The West Indies have reason to believe that they may have been shortchanged but the reality of the matter comes through when five cricketers are rested including Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan while several cricketers are ending up nursing injuries aggravated over a jampacked cricket schedule. The toll of schedule on players is perhaps making its greatest statement as well as the fact that it is the West Indies and not South Africa or Australia that the India are facing following the IPL 4.

India’s ODI squad for West Indies (revised):
Limited-overs squad: Suresh Raina (captain), R Ashwin, S Badrinath, Harbhajan Singh (vice captain), Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel, Parthiv Patel (wk), Yusuf Pathan, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Manoj Tiwary, Shikhar Dhawan

There was always the danger of something as seemingly extravagant as the IPL to implode. When Lalit Modi flaunted the IPL, there was a sense of feeling that the IPL was being billed as the greatest thing to have happened for cricket although the only thing that seemed to matter was the financial bottom line. Now the BCCI needs to weigh how its blessing is to be viewed because they have encouraged the club format with the deliberate inclusion of the players themselves.
It would be hard to see any Indian cricketer miss out on the IPL because either it gives the established cricketers an opportunity make money quickly or it gives those players on the fringe or further back the opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

It would be well for the BCCI and the IPL governing council to say that no Indian cricketer has been forced to participate in the cash rich Twenty20 venture, the fact of the matter is that the IPL is dependent on its star players, as are the IPL franchisee, in raising the profile of teams as well as the tournament itself.

After all one of the biggest factors against the Indian Cricket League - the ICL - was that the ‘rebel’ Twenty20 league lacked players and certificate from the mainstream. Without the Indian cricketers, the fate of the IPL is likely to suffer similar consequences which is why the BCCI is dependent on the players continuing to play to ensure that it rakes in the profits that have spilled over not only in the name of development but also, to benefit and in some cases, turn into a lustful greed for green for some of the game’s leading administrators.

For the players, playing is imperative not only from the perspective of the BCCI’s interest but in their own interests because it affords them a lifestyle and standard of living previously unseen for such a large contingent of cricketers, many of whom have not received the India cap and may never either.

With the kind of circumstances in which the IPL was envisioned, the ultimate goal has not always been the development of the player or the game but rather the commercial exploitation of a sport that was already been milked. With the introduction of new bosses in the IPL franchisees, the game has developed into a kind of seriousness that the cricketers have realized is something they will have to take in their stride if they are to keep the BCCI happy as well as their IPL franchisee owners.

In the case of someone like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, he is answerable to the future BCCI President, N. Srinivasan, who is on the same board that decides Dhoni needs rest but wants him to captain the Chennai Super Kings, in whom N. Srinivasan holds an ownership stake. So, the West Indies series can be sacrificed in the name of rest, but not seventeen matches for Dhoni in the IPL 4.

Unless the BCCI can restrain itself from going after the moolah and set rules that will restrict players to a certain amount of workload if participating in the IPL as well as take personal responsibility to ensure that tours are not arranged ad hoc when eying a commercial venture and that there is sufficient spacing of tours and tournaments such as the IPL and that games do not become meaningless with the increase in numbers, problems like these are simply the tip of the iceberg that would weaken the structure that was the business model not three years ago.

Would not Daniel Vettori like to push the Mumbai Indians out of the IPL 2 qualifier match so that the Royal Challengers Bangalore can make a date with the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 4 final on Saturday?
The Royal Challengers Bangalore had one foot in the IPL 4 final before Chennai Super Kings stormed back like defending champions should to take the first spot. However, for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, it has meant that they must confront one more hurdle - in the shape of the Mumbai Indians who beat Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL 4 eliminator to earn their right to another rematch before the final.

The Mumbai Indians will be going into the match brimming with excitement and confidence while one would expect a hurt and pressure fuelled Royal Challengers Bangalore. It makes one team the confident one and the other one a wounded tiger. Either way, that they will face each other should make for a pulsating competition to decide the second finalist.

With Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians, he will form the crux but for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, their fate appears to lie in the hands of Chris Gayle whose entry has dramatically enriched for the fortunes for the IPL 4 team. With the setting in Chennai at the same venue wherein less than twenty-four hours, one of these two teams will be locked in yet another battle royale in the IPL 4 final, one can expect both teams to raise their game and also, feel the pressure pulse in the course of the match.

With the final riding on it, it would be unwise to attempt to pick a winner in such a prickly match. The Royal Challengers Bangalore may have topped the IPL 4 points table, but the Mumbai Indians have stormed back into contention and will be on a high. If they can sustain it, it should make for a contest not to be missed.

The players are falling like nine pins, literally. With nine of the regular even Indian cricketers set to miss out on the India West Indies ODI series, what would one call this Indian team that will board the flight to the Caribbean?
With Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag the latest to join the likes of Mahendra Singh Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan amongst others to stay back in India rather than tour the West Indies for the ODI series, the Indian cricket team is going to struggle to look as it did during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

With the numbers that have now reached a danger mark, it would make little sense to call this the team that is vying for the no.1 ODI rank or one that recently won the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. With the opportunities it will accord to the fringe players, it can only make sense as an India A team, the second string team that used to compete against other A team sides in order to sharpen their skills.

The only problem is that while the West Indies will be at almost full strength amongst the present conditions, the Indian team that is going to the West Indies cannot possibly attract the same kind of attention, aura or intimidation given that none of the major league players will be a part of this venture.

Without them, this will be essentially a trial and a test for those cricketers who have been trying to break into the team or those looking to establish themselves as more permanent members of the team. This is definitely not the team expected to go to no.1 although the series can only serve to groom some of these boys into men to carry on the national duties.

With the star cricketers out due to rest or injury, it is a farce to be even calling the series another important assignment on the calendar for the top team. This is an India A side that will devalue the importance of it for the West Indies as well.

The war over Gautam Gambhir’s injury continues to rage on, with sides trading words over the issue and timing of his injury.
The Kolkata Knight Riders kept their peace until they lost their cool. That would be the way to describe their reaction following the alluding from some sources within the BCCI suggesting that the Kolkata Knight Riders franchisee was responsible for risking aggravating Gautam Gambhir’s shoulder injury, sustained in the previous match, by playing him in the IPL 4 eliminator match against the Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

While Gautam Gambhir believes he has a plausible reason to explain why he played despite the injury, the Kolkata Knight Riders are also not willing to take the accusations that they forced Gambhir to play in the interests of their commercial venture.

Gautam Gambhir slammed reports that he would play for his club over country interests, a plausible concept given that Gambhir is considered one of the most straightforward, straight talking cricketers in the Indian dressing room.

Although Gambhir has not denied that his shoulder bothered him during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, he continues to tow the line he did a day earlier when he stated that he was not made aware of the extent of his injury by the KKR physio, Andrew Leipus, who instead took the medical report to the BCCI with the interest to dissuade the BCCI from sending Gambhir for the West Indies tour as captain given the gravity of his injury.

Gambhir did not think that the shoulder that bothered him was too worrisome since the pain was not a chronic condition. He did however feel the pain in his shoulder during the final league match of the IPL 4 season when it was suggested that he undergo a medical assessment.

The Kolkata Knight Riders, on their part, were categorical in suggesting that Gambhir has picked up his groin and shoulder injuries before he joined the KKR for the IPL 4 season, playing down the idea that they had somehow forced the player, who incidentally is the most expensive cricketer at the IPL 4 auctions, to play even though he was far from fit.

Ultimately it seems to be coming back onto the BCCI and it will interesting why no assessment was made on Gambhir before picking him as India’s captain for the West Indies tour if indeed the injury was something he incurred during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

Yuvraj Singh became the second Indian cricketer after Gautam Gambhir to possibly drop out of the India West Indies ODI series. And another illness is set to take the toll on the team composition.
Even with the controversy revolving around Gautam Gambhir and shoulder injury, the BCCI and the Kolkata Knight Riders has barely died down, Yuvraj Singh has apparently reported a lung infection and requested rest from the India West Indies ODI series.

Yuvraj Singh was the Man of the Tournament for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 following which he was the Pune Warriors India captain in the IPL 4 season before he was named in the India’s ODI squad for the West Indies. However, Yuvraj Singh was not able inspire the Pune Warriors to similar heights as he did for team India in the World Cup. With the Pune Warriors losing ground steadily over the season, it is possible that fatigue and weariness may also be playing a factor to compound what he says is a lung infection.

However, even as the BCCI is still weighing whether Gambhir should take his place in the Indian team squad as the Indian captain for the tour with the medical report suggesting a lengthy recuperation period, Yuvraj Singh has become another problem for the Indian selectors who will have to assess Yuvraj Singh’s illness and then decide whether the team will need to be rejigged again.

The number of Indian cricketers missing on the West Indies tour is growing alarmingly which should be some reason for concern.

Although the BCCI is said to be rather angry over how the Gautam Gambhir’s injury matters with the Kolkata Knight Riders hit the headlines, there is also a section of those who believe that the BCCI was aware of Gambhir’s injury long before but did not prevent him from playing in the IPL 4. Why?
Gautam Gambhir reportedly first sustained the shoulder injury during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 final, a fact that was known to the BCCI if some of their sources are to be believed. But the twist in the story is that the BCCI is now said to be demanding answers as to how the severely injured Gautam Gambhir, the KKR captain, took the field against the Mumbai Indians in the IPL 4 eliminator at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, knowing that his Indian captaincy stint for the India West Indies ODI series was in jeopardy.

While there have been sneer remarks that Gambhir cannot lay responsibility on the KKR physio, Andrew Leipus, for not telling him the result of the medical report because Gambhir would have known from his pain how bad his condition was, there are also BCCI’s detractors who claim that the BCCI did not stop Gambhir when he suffered the injury before the IPL 4 season started and instead ensured that the IPL 4 was not without its stars by not checking up periodically on Gambhir.

There seems to be several shades of gray to the story although whether it warrants the kind of controversy it is being made out to be remains to be evaluated. That is because even in the past Gary Kirsten, the former Indian coach, suggested that the IPL was to blame for several Indians cricketers sustaining and continuing to play with niggles which affected India’s chances at the ICC World Twenty20. The BCCI had then reacted with a gag on Gary Kirsten. And it appears Gambhir is either on a self imposed gag or one issued by the BCCI.

Either way, there are dissensions that the BCCI chose to look the other way, knowing Virender Sehwag was playing with a sore shoulder and let him take the call on when he should stop playing in the IPL 4 for the Delhi Daredevils and go for surgery that will see him miss the India West Indies ODI series. In that sense, those on the outside are failing to understand why an issue is being made and singled out only with respect to Gambhir while several other Indians cricketers, including the captain, are being rested for the forthcoming ODI series but not advised to rest instead of stretching themselves through the IPL 4.