Clash of Indians in Champions League
The first semi final of Champions League T20 will be played on 24th September 2010 at Durban in which Chennai Super Kings, the Indian Premier League Champions would be challenged by the Royal Challengers from Bangalore. Both the teams have enough to play for because a win for Chennai Super Kings would give their skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni the unique distinction of captaining his teams to wins in T20 World Cup, Indian Premier League and Champions League T20 while a win for Anil Kumble would compensate for his teams failure to win the finals of the second edition of Indian Premier League and also prove that he deserved captaincy much earlier in his career.
The clash between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings is also a clash of two individuals. A win for M S Dhoni would reinforce his status as the best captain India had ever had. Kumble also has a point to prove because a win for Royal Challengers Bangalore would give him a opportunity to make a statement to his detractors that he should have been offered the captaincy much earlier in his career as he has done a creditable job whenever he was offered the captaincy of domestic and state teams. Kumble and Dhoni are opposites in every aspect. While the young M S Dhoni is the more experienced of the duo in terms of captaincy the vastly experienced Kumble is a relative newcomer to captaincy. Again there is yet another contrast as young M S Dhoni is regarded as Captain Cool on the international circuit while the senior Kumble is known for expressing his displeasure openly on the field if his members are not up to the task.
While it is great to see two Indian teams making it to the semi finals the greatest thing is one of them is assured of a place in the final and that is great news for Indian fans. However lot of teams would be feeling disappointed to see at least one IPL team making it to the finals. The bitter truth is Royal Challengers Bangalore have been far from convincing in the tournament and have literally ambled through to the semi finals and if luck is on their way they may well win the Championship as well. At the end of the day what matters for teams is not how they reach the knockout stages but it is how well they play in the knock out stages and the classic example is 1992 World Cup when Pakistan were literally knocked out of the tournament and once they made it to the semi finals they won the World Cup comfortably. In the third edition of Indian Premier League, Chennai Super Kings were far from convincing in the league stages but once they got through the semis they won the tournament.
Mumbai Indians have got every reason to feel disappointed becausethey failed to win make the semi finals even though they too finished the league with the same number of wins and defeats. Apart from this MumbaiIndians have been the most consistent team in theirgroup as theirlosses have been by very thin margins but what went against them was the most that they could not win big in their matches and let go off opportunities against a team like Guyana while Royal Challengers Bangalore made the most of their opportunities against weaker teams like Guyana thrashing them comfortably to boost their run rates. While Mumbai Indians and Lions have got every reason to feel disappointed because they too finished with two wins and two defeats Victoria Bush Rangers have got much more reasons to feel disappointed as they lost in their group inspiteof winning 3 matches out of 4. What went wrong in Group A was the fact that there were two extremely weak teams in Wayamba and Central Districts and that meant the other 3 teams were assured of a minimum of two wins.
After seeing the last league match which involved Chennai Super Kings and Warriors one also gets the feeling that the latter did not try hard for a team because had they tried a shade harder then Chennai Super Kings would have been out of the tournament. One can assume a couple of possibilities from the way Warriors chased against Chennai. The first possibility is Warriors would have wanted to finish second in the league as they would have been more comfortable facing South Australia or they would have had other interests keeping in view of auctions for the next edition of Indian Premier League
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