Royal Challengers open to Dravid as captain Rahul Dravid

South African all- rounder Jacques Kallis is apparently not the favourite to lead the Royal Challengers Bangalore once Kevin Pietersen leaves, if their fiery coach Ray Jennings is to be believed.

Jennings felt that with Kallis struggling with both bat and ball, the issue of Bangalore’s captaincy in IPL-2 was still open and there were number of candidates to take over the job.

“It is still open.

I need to sit down and discuss with the management what we need to do. If Jacques plays, obviously he might be captain.

But if he doesn’t play we have other guys like Boucher, Kumble and even Dravid (when he comes back) who are capable of leading the team,” Jennings was quoted as saying.

This contradicts an earlier announcement from team owner Vijay Mallya who had said that that Kallis would take over from Pietersen. Mallya had factored in Dravid’s likely absence from the Indian Premier League second edition to attend to his baby when he named Pietersen as captain instead of the former India skipper.

Deccan's winning style

Table topper Deccan Chargers’ fairytale campaign continued in the second Indian Premier League with the Adam Gilchrist-led side edging out Chennai Super Kings by six wickets to maintain their clean slate here on Monday.

Chasing 166, Deccan Chargers rode on Herschelle Gibbs’ (69 not out) second half-century of the tournament and captain Gilchrist’s buccaneering 44 off 19 balls to cruise to 169 for four in 19.3 overs to record their fourth win on the trot. Put into bat, Chennai Super Kings had earlier posted 165 for six, courtesy Matthew Hayden’s belligerent 49 and Jacob Oram’s breezy unbeaten 41 down the order.

Gilchrist and Gibbs were clearly in a hurry to wrap up the match and with both the batsmen going after the bowlers, Chennai simply had no respite. Gilchrist hit Lakshmipathy Balaji for back-toback fours in the first over to signal his intention. The Chennai pacer had a chance to settle scores in the next over but Balaji grassed a difficult caught-and-bowled chance and Gilchrist was simply unstoppable as he hit the pacer for two sixes and a boundary in that productive over. Gibbs, at the other end, matched his captain shot for shot, milking 20 runs of a Manpreet Gony over. Their association had yielded 67 runs in no time when Suresh Raina stopped them from running away with the match with double strikes.

Gilchrist perished at short third man in Raina’s first over and in his next, out-of-form VVS Laxman (4) was caught at the gully. Rohit Sharma (18) and Dwayne Smith (12) fell in quick succession but Gibbs stayed till the end to guide the side to victory. Earlier, Matthew Hayden muscled his way to a belligerent 49 while Jacob Oram hit a breezy unbeaten 41 as Chennai Super Kings posted 165 for six. By the time the match was into its second ball, the Deccan captain had reasons to feel vindicated as the scoreless Parthiv Patel tickled Fidel Edwards to perish caught behind. Deccan Chargers’ catching, however, was not upto the scratch.

Dropping Hayden — Gilchrist did a favour to his former Australia teammate — and Suresh Raina, Azhar Bilakhia being the culprit on this occasion, in quick succession proved costly as the left-handed duo cobbled a 64-run stand to prop up Chennai.

Raina (25) celebrated the life with a huge six off RP Singh, a treatment he later meted out to Fidel Edwards.

Hayden, who had warmed up with successive fours off RP Singh, looked determined to make the Deccan Chargers pay for their lapse as he cut and pulled with aplomb. Rohit Sharma finally broke the stand in his maiden over, catching Raina off his own bowling.

Chennai skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (22), largely subdued in the tournament so far, hit Venugopal Rao over the ropes but Pragyan Ojha snared both the Indian captain and Hayden in his second over. Oram swelled the tally with his unbeaten 29-ball 41, studded with four fours and two sixes.

Master’s blaster Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya rolled back the years with a thrill-a-minute 127 run opening partnership to power the Mumbai Indians to a 92-run win over the Kolkata Knight Riders in their Indian Premier League T20 match at St. George’s Park here on Sunday.

Chasing an unlikely 188 on a ground where the highest second innings total in a T20 game was 144, the Kolkata side subsided to 95 all out, despite a middle-overs partnership worth 54 for the third wicket between former India skipper Sourav Ganguly and Australia’s Brad Hodge. It was never enough against the mammoth ask posted by Mumbai.Knight Riders eventually totalled xx to subside to their third defeat in five matches that includes one no-result.

Earlier, the 36-year-old Tendulkar scored a 45-ball 68 which included six hits to the fence and four over it. His opening partner, the 39-year-old Jayasuriya scored 52 off 32 balls with four towering sixes and two fours.

The right-left combination had the bowlers on the ropes, with respite from neither end. Tendulkar started off with an exquisite flick off Ishant Sharma and then dispatched Ashok Dinda over third man for a six.

With Tendulkar on song the Sri Lankan was content playing second fiddle. Jayasuriya then joined the party in the fifth over, bowled by Ganguly. The southpaw hit two towering sixes, as the former India skipper was helpless in keeping a check on the rocketing run-rate — which hovered around the 10 runs an over mark almost the entire time the duo were at the crease.

Sri Lankan Ajantha Mendis also failed to curb the enterprising strokeplay on display. Tendulkar hit him for a massive six, which landed out of the stadium, to bring up his half-century. After 10 overs, Mumbai were 111/0.

However, the Knight Riders managed to claw their way back into the game thanks to some disciplined bowling from medium pacer Laxmi Ratan Shukla and part-timer Hodge.

Shukla returned for his second over and this time picked up the dangerous Jayasuriya. He was the most effective of the Knight Riders’ bowlers, taking 3/25.

Scores: Mumbai Indians 182/6 (Tendulkar 68, Jayasuriya 52; Shukla 3/25) bt Kolkata Knight Riders 95 (Ganguly 34; Malinga 3/11, Nayar 3/13)

Searching for a new Bollywood starlet in IPL

Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty will be amongthose watching all the women attending the Indian Premier League games in South Africa over the next five weeks to find the newest Bollywood starlet.

The IPL has announced a Bollywood movie role for one lucky South African lass as it prepares to launch the five-week Twenty20 extravaganza here on Saturday with an inaugural double header.

The search for a young South African woman with the potential to take Bollywood by storm was announced here on Thursday by IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi and Bollywood superstars Shah Rukh Khan, Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta, all having stakes in the IPL teams.
The lucky South African IPL fan with star quality stands to win a role in a Bollywood movie, 50,000 rands in cash, a business class trip to India and other prizes in the 2009 tournament’s Miss Bollywood SA competition.

“We’re looking for someone who has the star quality to stand out in a crowd, probably without even trying that hard. It’s that special, almost indefinable, quality that makes someone a star more than a beauty queen that we are looking for,” Modi said.

“IPL matches with their mix of fun and excitement are an excellent environment to identify the kind of person who is a natural stand-out in a big crowd.” “Star searches like this are a really great way to find people who may never even have thought that they have what it takes to really make it big,” the badhshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh said.