The first couple of games in the Indian Premier League 2010 have resulted in some special performances, and some surprise outcomes. Yusuf Pathan played one of the best twenty20 innings that I have ever seen, and he will rarely end up on the losing side if he churns out more performances like that. The Knight Riders shocked the Chargers in their opening match, and Ganguly and his boys will be geared up for their game against our team later today.

The mood is upbeat in the Royal Challengers camp, and the boys are keen to put in a special performance at the historic Eden Gardens. The Kolkata home crowd will be backing their team to the wire, and that’s something that the Challengers will have to deal with if the game gets close.

The razzmatazz of the Indian Premier League returns to its rightful home this season, after an exciting tournament in the southern cape last year. All of India will be eagerly awaiting the festivities, as a significant number of fans missed out on watching their favorite players in their home cities last season.

Apart from the various stakeholders of the IPL, everyone at Royal Challengers is extremely excited about the prospect of 7 home games at a packed KSCA, as well as travelling the length and breadth of India for some intense twenty20 cricket.

Our side has grown tremendously since the inaugural edition of the IPL, and it’s particularly heartening to witness the rapid strides that the likes of Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey, Vinay Kumar and Abhimanyu Mithun have made in their respective games.

There was a great deal of anticipation and excitement before our final match against the Delhi Daredevils, with a slim chance of a semi-final berth up for grabs. It was pretty clear to all of us that Victoria needed to beat the Cape Cobras to hand us a lifeline, but that was sadly not the case. I honestly believe that Victoria did extremely well to put up 125 in their 17 over innings, considering the fact that they had such a poor start losing 2 wickets in the first over. The Cobras have been batting well throughout the Champions League, and hardly broke a sweat in chasing down 125, to kill any hope of RCB getting into the last four.

One major difference between the IPL sides and the rest of the teams in the Airtel Champions League T20, is that the IPL players assemble for one tournament a year, whereas the other teams are part of the same first class units in their respective countries, and play together throughout the cricket season.

Our win against a lackluster Otago Volts outfit, was an exercise of complete domination, and I must say that our boys were flawless in executing their plans and strategies. There are very few one-sided T20 games, but the capitulation of the Volts against our bowlers, clearly defined the gap in ability of the two sides.