third-time lucky
Sunrisers may be the newest entrants to the IPL parivaar (family)
but it would be Warriors who would be seen in a new avatar. Since their
bottom-placed finish last year, a lot of water has flown under the
bridge. When it came to running the team, it was a one-man army last
year, with Sourav Ganguly acting as a captain-mentor.Come 2013, and Ganguly is nowhere in the picture. Instead, it's Allan
Donald who has been elevated from a bowling coach to the head coach. And
for the third time during their third year in IPL, Warriors have
appointed a new captain at the start of the season. Beyond the captain
and the navigator of the ship lie the real changes. There are more than a
dozen changes to the squad that represented Warriors last year.
Those who attended Donald's half-hour interaction with the press would
realise that their homework has been near- perfect. Warriors made far
too many changes to their line-up last year. As a result, only one
player - Robin Uthappa - featured in each of their 16 games, while a
whopping 23 players got at least a game. As a result, the team
combination was far from settled throughout the season.
This time around, though, Donald and Co have decided to downsize the
squad for every game from 33 to 16, if not 15. And the thrust during the
build-up hasn't just been on adding match-winning overseas cricketers.
As a result, domestic stars like Abhishek Nayar, Ishwar Pandey, T Suman
and Parvez Rasool, who became the first player from Jammu & Kashmir
to have been signed by an IPL franchise after impressive domestic
season, have indeed made Warriors a formidable outfit at least on paper.
The coming weeks will tell us whether the line-up that looks as
impressive as any other on paper delivers the goods on the field.
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