Rahul Dravid

No..... Not again please!

2010-07-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

It has been a long-long-long....... wait to see Rahul Dravid batting and finally the moment arrives. You see The Wall of India walking in and you just leave all your work aside to stick to the television set. He stays on the wicket for good 60+ minutes and all of a sudden he runs himself out. Yes, "Rahul Dravid run out 18 (34 balls) " is what pops-up on TV . After watching this, my head demands a bucket of water to be poured on it. And why not? Getting run-out in a test match is something unacceptable, especially for someone like Rahul Dravid. Poor remote controller gets banged on the floor, TV is turned off and you go back to the work.
End of the story! Or is it? No. You forgive your hero and hope that he plays well in the 2nd innings.

Next day, India are handed a follow-on and Gambhir gets out in the 1st over. 0/1 is the score , not an ideal situation for any player to enter in. In comes Rahul Dravid and starts off with his rock-solid defense. Srilankans test him with outside the offstump line without any success. On the other hand, Sehwag throws his wicket away and Rahul gets joined by Sachin.
Both these legends once again prove why they have scored 10k+ runs in the test format. No risks taken, no unnecessary chases for the ball, not a single ball hit in the air - and you know that this pair is all set to save Team India. Both of them play out 40+ overs to add 119 runs to the teams total.
And now comes another dissapointment - Rahul flicks one straight into the hands of leg gully. A delievery that deserved a place outside the boundary gets placed safely into Sangakkara's hands. Srilankans know they have got a huge wicket and Dravid walks back in frustration. Sachin follows him to the pavillion in the very next over and you know it's all over for Team India. Team India loses Dravid, Sachin and Yuvraj in last 6 overs to put themselves in a danger of losing the match by an innings.

This ends today's story. Team India has it's last batting pair left (Laxman and Dhoni). It's just a matter of interest to see if Team India can save themselves from embarrassing defeat or not!

Double century of catches - 7 catches left!

2010-07-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Many of you may not have realized that Rahul Dravid is just 7 catches away from a '200' mark. Considering that there are 3 test matches scheduled against Srilanka, this feat is quite achievable in this series itself.
Wishing all the best to team India to win this 'never-won' series against Srilankans on their home soil.

Rahul Dravid: Swan song for a workhorse

2010-06-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

Source: cnngo.com
Writer: Gaurav Kapur

Rahul Dravid has two kinds of fans. The ones that think he’s cute and intense (mostly women) and the other who think he’s sturdy and reliable (old school cricket fans). And it is this vast list of devoted followers that explain the off field career of an Indian batsman known as The Great Wall of India.

There are precious few young followers of the game who revere Dravid. They respect him, they may even like him (there’s very little to dislike about him), but are they likely to sit in the sun for three hours to watch him score a hundred? I sincerely doubt it. For he is not swashbuckling, he’s not grand, he’s not glam. But he’s one of the batting greats of world cricket today and mark my words, will go down as one of the greats of all time.

He will also be known as the player who never got his due.

One who sacrificed entertainment at the alter of team spirit. The one man, in a band of seemingly selfish individuals, who cared for team records over his own. He pleases the eye, but will he make your heart rate fluctuate like the Sensex on election result day? Not likely.

He’s correct. In technique, in choosing the right shot, in choosing the right words. And that’s where lies the problem. The problem is his near perfection. The youth of India are not fans of perfection. Our poster boys are slightly bad, they’re a tad controversial, and they’re in trouble now and then. For picking the wrong ball to hit, the wrong girl to date, and the wrong words to speak to when the Australians are up their backs.

Even a Sachin is prone to fiddling outside the off stump early in the innings. Ask any bowler and he will tell you that all the greats will give you a half chance early in their innings, except Dravid. From the time he puts on that helmet, you know that you will have to sweat and toil for his wicket. You will have to outthink him, con him, get him with an inspirational burst of sheer genius. He will not just hand it to you. He’s not tempted by the glory of a few quick boundaries, or the dance down the wicket for the big six. He’s patient, and he wants the team to win, whether he needs to get a dozen or a ton.

And in a culture of instant consumption, one that India has seemed to embrace whole heartedly, this rates as boring. Hence you don’t find him selling too many things on your idiot box, because advertising in our country is targeted toward the youth. He’s sold the odd cola, but in a crowd. He’s also sold car batteries and multiplugs (or was it trip switches) a product list as appealing as Barbara Streisand in hot pants straddling a wooden buck horse.

And lets not even start on the way our very own board has treated him. They made him captain when no one wanted the job. They made him wicketkeeper when they couldn’t nurture all-rounders. They picked him for the one dayers last summer, and dropped him after an impressive series. Only because they wanted to groom a team for tomorrow.

But does all that bring him down? Answer yet again, my friends, is no. In fact this appears, oddly enough, to motivate him even more, to perform better.

Let’s go back in time.

He was dropped from the ODI team early in his career, but he clawed his way back in. Then rather unceremoniously he was dropped again. Agreed he had a bad inaugural Indian Premier League but so did a lot of others. Afridi, Gibbs, Kallis, Ganguly, Ponting. It was no surprise that he was dropped as captain for IPL 2, and what did he do? He showed from the first game that he wasn’t a pipe smoking old timer in the T20s. His man of the match performance against the defending champions showed that he wasn’t rocking chair material, instead was rock star material! Just sans the ‘image’.

The only people who seemed to have realized his true legend status have been the good folk at that razor blade making company. By making him stand next to Tiger Woods, Thierry Henry and Roger Federer they have in one mach stroke confirmed that he’s not just one of the greatest batsman India has produced, but one of the true greats of the game. Ok, maybe Henry’s a bit of a stretch, but Dravid isn’t.

Former captain of India Saurav Ganguly will vouch for the team player that Rahul is. India’s most ‘successful captain’ couldn’t have done it without his ‘Wall’. Of the 49 tests Sourav lead in, Dravid played in all, scoring almost 5,000 runs at an average of over 73. In the same period Sachin was averaging the early 60s and Laxman and Sehwag in the early 40s. Factor in that Ganguly himself averaged fewer than 40 per match and its clear to see who was the biggest contributor in one of the most successful phases of Indian test cricket in recent memory.

The sad thing is that we will be seeing even less and less of Rahul Dravid in 2010. He’ll have his few games in the IPL. But besides that we have the opportunity to see him in two current tests matches versus Bangladesh. And then we wont see him put on his India hat another test for another six months.

Will he be hopping the bus for the World Cup in 2011? I doubt it.

Last week Rahul Dravid fractured his jaw playing for his team, and in a boring old test against Bangladesh. He was batting at 111. A Nelson. If that's not bad luck I don't know what is.

Call this my premptive farewell piece to one of my favorite batsmen of all time.

Rahul Dravid may not have been a treat on the eyes like a Hayden or a Gilly. But one look at him walking to the centre was enough to warm the toggles. You knew that the country was in safe hands.

Rahul Dravid has the highest number of "significant" innings: A Cricinfo analysis

2010-06-23T02:51:00.000-07:00

It is nice to be back after a valuable and recharging break. It is also wonderful to renew acquaintance with the valued readers. The break was necessary but I could not wait for the self-imposed sabbatical to be over.
In this article I have gone back to the reader's suggestions, specifically Xolile. He had suggested a few months back that I should look at separating the significant Test innings based on runs scored and balls faced, wherever such information is available, and rating batsmen using this information. I have taken that suggestion and completed the analysis after significantly improving the basis.

He had suggested that I take 80 runs and 160 balls as the basis. I have instead worked on a dynamic fixing of the cut-off points based on the specific match conditions. The idea is that I should achieve the following inclusions and exclusions through this analysis.

The analysis should be done so that the following innings (just a few examples) are included.

- Gillespie's 9 (off 51) out of Aus total of 93 a.o (30 overs) at Mumbai
- Guptill's 30 (off 122) out of Nzl total of 157 a.o (59.1 overs) at Wellington
- Srinath's 76 (off 159) out of Ind total of 416 a.o (128.3 overs) at Hamilton
- Hutton's 30 (balls n/a) out of Eng total of 52 a.o. (42.1 overs) at Oval
- A.H.Kardar's 69 (balls n.a) out of Pak total of 199 a.o (91.3 overs) at Karachi
and so on.

and the following innings (just a few examples) are not included.

- Collingwood's 60 out of Eng total of 569 for 6 at Chester
- Clarke's 83 out of Aus total of 674 for 6 at Cardiff
- Ranatunga's 86 out of Slk total of 952 for 6 at Colombo
- Walcott's 88* out of Win total of 790 for 3 at Kingston
- Rae's 63* and Stollymeyer's 76* out of Win total of 142 for 0 at Trinidad
and so on.
I have taken one decision, slightly reluctantly. Any 100 would be considered to be significant. Although I do not consider a 100 by itself to be anything special, I think this is a correct decision since out of the 68,879 innings played to date only 3370 hundreds have been scored and this constitutes around 5%. It is not a bad premise to start with, banking one in twenty innings.

As far as the often quoted instances of batsmen scoring 100s in dead match situations, the following example will show the pitfalls.

Take a match where two days have been washed out. The match scores are

Team 1: 300 for 5. Team 2: 300 for 6. Team 1: 300 for 7 (Xyz 100+).

If the first two days are lost due to rain, the third innings century is a totally irrelevant one scored on the last day. On the other hand if the last two days have been washed out, the third innings century is a very relevant one made in a live match situation on the third day. If the rain had occurred on other days, the value of the 100 would oscillate significantly. Hence pre-conceived notions of the significance or non-significance of innings should not be used to come to conclusions. Also incorporating rain factor, when it happened, on what day the runs were scored all are virtually impossible in any analysis because of the absence of dependable data.

Since 80 and 160 are arbitrary, I have worked on a dynamic determination of the cut-off for each match, separate for either team. This makes sense since I should include an innings of 9 and exclude a 88* innings. There cannot be common cut-off criteria.

The cut-off methodology is explained below. Based on the cut-off points 2 to 5, 12,529 innings below 100 have got selected.

An innings is considered to be significant if it satisfies any one of the following five conditions.

1. The runs scored is greater than or equal to 100 (already talked of).

2. The balls faced is greater than or equal to 200.

3. The runs scored is greater than or equal to the cut-off figure for the team, as explained below.
- For batsmen 1-7, 1.333 times the Runs per wkt value for the team for the two innings together.
- For batsmen 8-11, 1.167 times the Runs per wkt value for the team for the two innings together.

4. The balls faced is equal to or higher than the cut-off figure for the team, as explained below.
- For batsmen 1-7, 1.667 times the Balls per wkt value for the team for the two innings together.
- For batsmen 8-11, 1.333 times the Balls per wkt value for the team for the two innings together.

5. To take care of very low innings totals, see Hutton example above, the runs scored is greater than or equal to one third of the team total. The team should have lost 5 wickets or more. Otherwise Stollymeyer-type innings would get through.

Seems complicated but all conditions are logical once the above 5 conditions are understood properly, and the fact that an innings has to adhere to at least one of these in order to be seen as significant in this analysis. Of course, a cursory glance would be woefully inadequate. These cut-off numbers have also been determined after a lot of trial work during the past few days. A higher cut-off will mean missing out of some significant innings while a lower cut-off will mean inclusion of ordinary innings. Overall this method is slightly unfair to older batsmen since they have only the "Runs scored" criteria available to them. However nothing can be done about that.

I got a massive list of 15,899 innings, which is about 23% and this figure looks good. Then I posted these into the player database and got the player table. This table is sequenced on the % of significant innings since the number of innings played varies considerably. The cut-off for batsman selection is 3000 runs and above. 159 batsmen qualify.

SNo Batsman For Mats Runs Inns SI % SI

1.Bradman D.G Aus 52 6996 80 43 53.8

2.EdeC Weekes Win 48 4455 81 39 48.1

3.Hobbs J.B Eng 61 5410 102 49 48.0

4.Chanderpaul S Win 123 8669 210 98 46.7

5.Barrington K.F Eng 82 6806 131 61 46.6

6.Sutcliffe H Eng 54 4555 84 39 46.4

7.Lara B.C Win 131 11953 232 106 45.7

8.Dravid R Ind 139 11395 240 108 45.0

9.Hutton L Eng 79 6971 138 62 44.9

10.Flower A Zim 63 4794 112 50 44.6

11.May P.B.H Eng 66 4537 106 47 44.3

12.Viswanath G.R Ind 91 6080 155 68 43.9

13.Hammond W.R Eng 85 7249 140 61 43.6

14.Compton D.C.S Eng 78 5807 131 57 43.5

15.Umrigar P.R Ind 59 3631 94 40 42.6

16.Mitchell B Saf 42 3471 80 34 42.5

17.Sarwan R.R Win 83 5759 146 62 42.5

18.Manjrekar V.L Ind 55 3208 92 39 42.4

19.Javed Miandad Pak 124 8832 189 80 42.3

20.Gavaskar S.M Ind 125 10122 214 89 41.6

How often do we a table headed by Bradman. More than 1 out of 2 innings played by Bradman are significant. He is the only player to have exceeded 50%. Then come two giants, Weekes and Hobbs, who have figures around 48%, the one mitigating factor is that they are within 10% of Bradman.

Now the biggest surprise. The unheralded and unsung Chanderpaul clocks in at 46.7% ahead of his more illustrious contemporaries. It shows the solidity and quality Chanderpaul brought to position No. 6. He could very well improve in the years to come. Barrington and Sutcliffe come in next, both great defensive batsmen. Hutton chips in in the 10th position.

Now we have two modern greats, Lara and Dravid. Lara's playing in a weaker team has helped a bit in this regard, but there can be few detractors to the claims of his greatness. Same applies to Dravid. What he has achieved for India has not been acknowledged, especially on the Test front. It is very pleasing to see some of the Indian greats of the past eras, viz., Viswanath, Umrigar, Manjrekar and Gavaskar appear in the top-20. They played in tough times and this has been recognised. Rounding this table in the 9th position is Andy Flower, one of the greatest modern batsmen ever, slightly benefiting from playing for a weaker team.

I have also given below the top 10 batsmen in terms of number of significant innings.

Table of batsman by number of significant innings

SNo Batsman For Mats Runs Inns SI % SI

1.Dravid R Ind 139 11395 240 108 45.0

2.Lara B.C Win 131 11953 232 106 45.7

3.Border A.R Aus 156 11174 265 103 38.9

4.Tendulkar S.R Ind 166 13447 271 103 38.0

5.Chanderpaul S Win 123 8669 210 98 46.7

6.Kallis J.H Saf 137 10843 231 94 40.7

7.Waugh S.R Aus 168 10927 260 92 35.4

8.Stewart A.J Eng 133 8465 235 90 38.3

9.Gavaskar S.M Ind 125 10122 214 89 41.6

10.Inzamam-ul-Haq Pak 120 8830 200 82 41.0

This is a quantity table. Dravid is on top with 108 performances and is followed by Lara with 106. Both are placed in the top-10 of the main table. Then comes the great fighter, Border and the incomparable Tendulkar with 103 significant innings. These four are the only batsmen to exceed 100 significant innings. Chanderpaul and Kallis should soon breach this number.

Rahul Dravid rewarded with "Pride of Karnataka"

2010-06-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

Gardener of MindTree Subroto Bagchi; Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid; Kannada cinema director Yogaraj Bhat; and co-founders of the non-governmental organisation (NGO), Janaagraha, Ramesh and Swati Ramanathan, were honoured with the award by NGO Round Table India in the city on Tuesday.

Dravid won the jury’s award in the field of sports. He said he was inspired by the NGO’s work spread over half a century.

A nice interview of Rahul Dravid

2010-05-18T13:21:00.001-07:00

Interviewer: Mihir Bose

He is also known as “Jammy” but that is because his father worked for Kissan, the Indian jam manufacturer. He is the man whose batting has done much to help India become the No1 Test team in world cricket.

We are sitting on the terrace of a Dubai hotel. The Indian Premier League has just finished, England are about to become the World Twenty20 champions and so our chat turns naturally to his Bangalore Royal Challengers team-mate Kevin Pietersen.

“He is a very good player, a very, very good player,” says Dravid. But what about criticisms of Pietersen's approach to the game: self-centred and even, at times a bit of a hot head?

“No, no, no, no,” he insists. “One of the things that my interactions with Kevin have revealed is that he deeply cares about his performances. He really wants to do well and he's always keen to learn.”

Indeed, so keen is Pietersen to learn that, during their time together playing for Bangalore, he even asked the Indian for some batting tips. “Kevin is desperate to do well, not just in the T20 or the one-day format of the game but in Test cricket,” Dravid says. “You can sense that he really wants to make a mark and go down as a great cricketer. So, as long as he can stay fit, I think he's going to make a lot of runs for England.”

For Dravid, who was not in the West Indies for the World Twenty20, Pietersen's triumph — he was man of the tournament as he helped to guide England to their first ICC trophy — comes as no surprise.

“He's got a lot of talent, he is a terrific player and he's got that hunger.”

While the two could not be more different, the bond between them is easy to understand. Like Pietersen, Dravid has been driven by a hunger, his being to prove that India could become a power in world cricket and shed its image of tigers at home, yet lambs abroad.

“I remember on my first tour of England in 1996 the players discussing that we did not to do well away from home,” he recalls. “It became a goal for some of us to start winning series abroad.

“Over the years I have sensed this even more in the young guys. They were sick and tired that we lost a lot when playing abroad. So you'd see guys preparing specifically for tours, recognising the skills required to do well abroad and setting out to achieve it.”

That achievement seemed an impossible dream on that June Saturday in the summer of 1996 when Dravid made his Test debut at Lord's. Batting at No7 he could have been mistaken for a tailender.

In any event, many Englishmen at headquarters barely noticed him. Their minds, if not eyes, that afternoon were glued to television screens beaming pictures from Wembley where England were beating Spain on penalties in a Euro 96 quarter-final.

Although he made 95 before falling victim to the now jailed Chris Lewis, the innings caused little stir. It was a decade later, with Dravid leading the side, that the Indians finally began to get the monkey off their back.

In 2006, India won a series in the West Indies for the first time in 35 years and followed it by winning one in England the summer after, the first for over two decades. By then, Dravid had also captained India for their first Test wins in Pakistan and South Africa.

“Before 1996, I'd come with the young schoolboys' team to England but had very little exposure to playing abroad,” he says. “I hardly played any Under-19 cricket against other countries.

“Today most of the guys that come into the Indian team have travelled everywhere in the world. They've played on different wickets, in different conditions and on different pitches. They're a lot more confident than we were. And the game has spread to small towns in India, the facilities and infrastructure has improved.”

It is typical of Dravid not to mention that he scores more runs abroad than at home with an overseas average of nearly 60. His journey has meant that Indian cricket, barely tolerated when he made his debut, has virtually taken over at the top table. India provides 80 per cent of world cricket's income and the Indian Premier League offers cricketers football-style riches.

Like so much in India, it happened quickly just months after they won the inaugural T20 World Cup in September 2007.

Dravid was not part of that winning Indian team, stepping down from the captaincy after the England tour. Sachin Tendulkar and other senior players also opted out and the word was that Indians did not much care for this form of cricket. Nothing much was expected of the team.

Dravid says: “I felt that it would be nice if some of the younger guys went on and played the Twenty20 format of the game. There's a lot of young, exciting talent coming through in India. You could sense that these guys were keen and hungry to play.”

But while Dravid is not part of the Indian T20 team he is central to the IPL and has no doubt what it represents.

“The best players in the world play and the quality of cricket has been truly terrific,” he claims. “There's a lot of stuff that happens around it but, when the cricket starts and the players cross the white line, nobody wants to play the fool in front of 50,000 people with millions watching on television. Watch the intensity of the games and see the world-class players, who have had long illustrious Test careers, trying to do well, and you realise the cricket is exceptionally good.”

His happiness with the format is enhanced because it has meant that, for the first time in his long career, he has played domestic cricket in front of packed stadiums. After years playing in empty grounds, with spectators allowed in free but attracting not many more when he played for Kent, the IPL is a domestic tournament played to full houses.

He adds: “It is a fine balance between the hype and the actual cricket but it's incredible how it has caught the imagination of the people.”

And Dravid is just as sure the IPL city-based franchises, modelled on the English Premier League, will catch on. One reason given for launching the IPL was the fear that the Indian youth were being seduced by Premier League football. Dravid, himself, is an Arsenal supporter. Partly this was to be distinct from the rest of the Indian dressing room who support Manchester United. “Anybody but United was my slogan,” he says, however he was also drawn to the Gunners by Arsene Wenger's “professorial and intellectual style”.

The idea of football-style city-based teams may be novel in cricket but Dravid says: “Given that some of the English Premier League clubs have been in existence for over 100 years, the popularity of these IPL franchises, which have been in existence only for three years, is just terrific.

“In my home city of Bangalore, I was struck by the number of people coming into the ground with red T-shirts and red flags, a sea of red.”

But is he not ignoring some very ugly realities: match-fixing allegations and the IPL being investigated by the authorities for financial irregularities? Dravid's response to the claims, which concern matches played in South Africa last year, is robust. “I'm not aware of any of these things happening. Having said that, it's up to the authorities to probe into these allegations.”

The financial scandal may prove more far reaching. It has seen an Indian government minister resign and Lalit Modi, the creator of the IPL, suspended facing serious charges. As a by product, it could also lead to IMG, advisers to the IPL, suing Giles Clarke, chairman of England and Wales Cricket Board, about allegations he has made regarding Modi and the IPL.

Dravid plays this with a dead bat. “There have been issues in and around the management and the administration side of the game, which happens in a lot of sports,” he says.

“There is an inquiry going on. We ought to wait for the results. The game owes a responsibility to its many millions of fans to be seen to be running itself in the right way. I hope that the administrators will do that.”

But he does admit that it's hard to say what the long-term impact might be.

“If the right decisions are taken and if the inquiry is fair, I don't think it will have a long-term impact,” he argues. “Let's face it, we have had problems in the Olympics. It doesn't take away from the actual competition. People still want to watch the 100metres. People still love the game of cricket.”

Dravid's own love of the game began when, at the age of 10, he saw Kapil Dev standing on the Lord's balcony and lifting the 1983 World Cup. “It was one of the first matches I saw on TV at a very impressionable age and that made a huge impact, not only on me but on the cricketers of my generation: Sourav [Ganguly], Sachin [Tendulkar] [VVS] Laxman, and Anil [Kumble]. We all grew up with that memory.”

Yet, for all the achievement of his generation of Indians, the 50-over World Cup remains a hole in their record. Indians have not won it since 1983.

Dravid, who after being dropped early on his career from the one-day side has scored more than 10,000 ODI runs, admits: “That is a little bit of a disappointment but our generation can look back on Indian cricket when we've finished and say that we left it in a better place than when we started.”

With Dravid out of the Indian ODI side it is hard to see how the hole could be filled. At 37 and with a young family he has, he says, no personal goals of centuries or runs to score.

His targets are “to win a Test series in Australia or South Africa”.

But should next February — when the subcontinent hosts the 50-over World Cup — Dravid return to the side and gains a winner's medal not only would it round off a remarkable career, he could look KP in the eye as the Englishman flashes his Twenty20 medal.

RCB qualify for Champions League with a bang

2010-04-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

Scorecard:
DC: 82 all out (Kumble 4/13, PK 2/18)
RCB: 86/1 (Dravid 35*)

Excellent bowling effort from RCB bowlers along with the poor shot selection from DC batsmen saw the DC innings falling like a house of cards. DC were nowhere in the game after winning the toss and losing quick wickets at the start. Kumble lead the bowlers with 4 wickets for 13 runs.
With this win, RCB managed to grab the 3rd spot in the IPL as well as a place in the Champions League 2010.

RCB vs DC - fight for the 3rd slot

2010-04-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

After disappointing performances in semifinals, both RCB and DC will gear-up for the Champion's league qualifier, scheduled on 24th April. MI and CSK being the finalists have already got themselves qualified for the Champions league.
RCB have got a good team and they should think twice before making any changes to the squad that played the semifinal. The game is equally crucial for both teams as the semifinal was.Gilchrist has not yet played his "typical" innings and that's the main reason behind ups and downs in DC's performance.

Good luck RCB!

MI enter finals with an easy win

2010-04-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

It was a huge disappointment for RCB fans as RCB got thrashed by MI in the semifinals.
MI recovered from 81/4, thanks to Raydu, Tiwary and Pollard to score a mammoth total of 184 in 20 overs. RCB were never in the game with such a huge total to chase considering the quality of the bowling attack MI had. RCB were able to score 149/9 in 20 overs.

Scorecard:
MI: 184/5 (Tiwary 52)
RCB: 149/9 (Pollard 14/3)

RCB to face MI in semifinal

2010-04-18T07:20:00.001-07:00

MI and RCB being rank 1 and 4 resp. in the points table, will be playing the 1st semifinal of IPL-3. The match is held on 21st April and the venue has been shifted from Bangalore to Navi Mumbai due to the blast that took place yesterday.
On the other hand, CSK will be facing either DD/DC (winner of today's match) in the 2nd semifinal.

My playing 11 for RCB will be:
1. Rahul Dravid
2. Manish Pandey /Balachandra Akhil
3. Jacques Kallis (if RD gets out early)
4. Kevin Pietersen
5. Robin Uthappa
6. Virat Kohli
7. Ross Taylor/ Van der Merwe
8. Anil Kumble
9. Dale Steyn
10. Vinay Kumar
11. Pravin Kumar/Pankaj Singh/Abhimanyu Mithun