The Delhi team cannot be called Daredevils anymore, there is nothing daring about the team composition. With the strangest selection of players, most were perplexed as to what was going on in the GMR minds on the day of the auction.
They did not bother to retain Gautam Gambhir and bought Ajit Agarkar who is an all rounder for a hefty sum. Question is why? Agarkar was disastrous in the previous IPL seasons where he was playing for Kolkata Knight Riders. He lacks discipline, is not at all penetrating and does not have aggression in his bowling, quite honestly lack lustre, unless he has had a life changing transformation and is suddenly a high class bowler I don’t understand the point of buying him. Maybe GMR knew something we didn’t.
Why wasn’t Gautam Gambhir retained? He is in terrific form and is a Delhite, when Sehwag was removed as captain Gambhir came in his place, so how do you not retain your captain? GMR seems to have OD’ed on something.
Some of the other interesting choices are Andrew McDonald who at the risk of sounding horrible actually looks like Ronald McDonald, either way his bowling was very temperamental and the choice to keep him on is bizarre.
If the DD team decides to make Sehwag and Warner open, it will be the stupidest move ever. The previous season showed how both Sehwag and Warner are hard hitters and neither can stop themselves or rotate strike in the presence of the other, so they end up getting dismissed almost a few balls short of each other. A dynamite pair on paper but spells disaster in reality.
A few good buys were Morne Morkel, Irfan Pathan, Ashok Dinda, Unmukt Chand and Umesh Yadav who will hopefully perform well.
There is nothing more that I hope for than having to eat my own words, if the Delhi team succeeds that will be more than enough.
Delhi Team:
- Virender Sehwag
- Morne Morkel
- Irfan Pathan
- Ashok Dinda
- Ajit Agarkar
- Naman Ojha
- Aaron Finch
- Vikas Mishra
- Venugopal Rao
- Andrew McDonald
- David Warner
- Unmukt Chand
- Matthew Wade
- Travis Birt
- Colin Ingram
- Robert Frylinck
- Roelof van der Merwe
- Umesh Yadav
- Robin Bist
- James Hopes
- Varun Raymond Aaron
- Aavishkar Salvi
- Rajesh Pawar
- Sridharan Sriram
- Yogesh Nagar
- Vivek Yadav
- Ajit Chandila
Tags: Cricket, DD, Delhi Daredevils, Indian Premier League, IPL, IPL 2011, IPL 4, Squad, Team Analysis