“Royal Challengers Bangalore”, a team that has scaled new heights with every tournament and every challenge faced, setting its own high standards. A team that has the best challengers, hard working management and the craziest fans of cricket!! RCB has been unique in whatever it has done; be it the retaining of players, the team composition or addressing social responsibility. The team’s “GAME FOR GREEN” campaign have gained lots of appreciation from critics and increased their fan base.

The team has been tactical ever since it’s poor show in the first season of the IPL. The management has never been hesitant from taking debatable decisions like the inclusion of Wasim Jaffer and Jacques Kallis in to the team in the first season. After the end of the 3rd season of IPL, the management retained only one player- the young and dynamic Virat Kohli as a part of their team, ignoring promising players like Ross Taylor, Kevin Pietersen, Robin Uthappa and Anil Kumble. The gamble seems to have worked in favor of the team as it is evident from the team’s performance in IPL 4. RCB has been a team that has learnt from its failure and stung hard during its comeback. The team’s performance in the 2nd season and the 4th season are classic examples of the statement.

IPL witnessed a twist in the tale before IPL 5, which is scheduled to begin in April 2012. ‘Kochi Tuskers Kerala’ (KTK) one of the 10 teams of IPL was terminated for breaching its term of agreements and hence reducing the tournament to a 9 team affair.
A new challenge lays ahead before the start of IPL5- the auction of players of KTK and a set of 185 foreign players. The great minds at the office are already at work, as to who should be picked in to the team to make it a better team. During the window period, the management announced the signing of Australian all-rounder Andrew McDonald and Indian young pace star of Haryana Harshal Patel. The team also signed the IPL 4 star Chris Gayle who turned around the fortunes of the team during the season, who was called in as a replacement to the injured Dirk Nannes. The team gets stronger by this deal of signing the “GAYLE STORM”!

Given the current composition of the team, it looks a well-balanced set of players- young and energetic guns like VIrat Kohli, Mayank Agarwal, Saurabh Tiwary, S Aravind, Syed Mohammed; experienced challengers like Daniel Vettori, Chris Gayle, Zaheer Khan, AB de Villiers, T Dilshan and many more stars. Though the team has explosive and efficient foreign players, the team needs to have a back-up of foreign stars when the former might not be available due to national commitments. The probable players the management can look out for during the auction on Feb 4 are:

Batsmen: Owais Shah (Eng), Darren Bravo (WI), Dinesh Chandimal (SL).
Bowler: Sreesanth, Vinay Kumar (Ind), Xavier Doherty, Ben Laughlin (Aus), Sunil Narine (WI).
All-rounder: Ravindra Jadeja (Ind), Luke Wright (Eng), Andre Russell (WI), Thisara Perera (SL).

- Written by Jigarr Jain

And that is his wish-list of players that RCB should opt for in the auction to be help on 4th February, 2012. Who are your favourite players? Whom do you wanna see in Red-n-Gold gang? Mention them in the comments now....