IPL 2016 Teams and Player Overview

April is the starting month for two seasons. First is the mango season and second is the Indian Premier League season! Indians love both and in the last few years, April-May period is not complete without these two. The IPL is an excellent platform for the world to see the best cricketing talent playing together.

Also, for Indian youngsters it is a great opportunity to impress the national selectors or at least take a note of their talent. We have seen Indian players like Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah come into the national squad because of their domestic as well as IPL performances. Even foreign players like Shaun Marsh and David Wiese have benefitted from the IPL.

Talking about this year’s IPL, there are no favourites but Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore are the strong teams. 2016 edition of the IPL will see the inclusion of two teams. Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals will be replaced by Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions. In the recent auction, the players of these two franchises and other players were auctioned too. Let’s take a closer look on each side and how the additions and subtractions of players affect the teams.

Mumbai Indians: Reigning champions Mumbai Indians have a balanced squad. Captain Rohit Sharma, who looked out of form in the recently concluded World T20 would love to score some big runs. The likes of Kieron Pollard, Harbhajan Singh, Corey Anderson and Lendl Simmons have played together for a long time now and they know the strengths and weaknesses.

Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya were the find of last year’s IPL and a lot will be expected from them. Lasith Malinga’s injury concerns is the only problem MI will face but they have other good bowlers in their arsenal. MI bought Jos Buttler and Tim Southee in this year’s auction who strengthen the squad more.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: ‘The team with superstars’ as I like to call them, RCB, has failed to win any title so far but will go for it once again. Virat Kohli has got able players in Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Mitchell Starc and the addition of Shane Watson and Samuel Badree gives them the variety in the bowling attack.

If this team plays it’s ‘A’ game, there is hardly any team who can match their quality. Indian players like Sarfraz Khan, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Varun Aaron, etc. have performed well in IPL so far. Another exciting year awaits them!

Delhi Daredevils: Zaheer Khan has been named as the captain of DD for this season. A squad (with all due respect) which lacks impact players, DD will have to pull up their socks to challenge the big sides of IPL. Players like JP Duminy, Imran Tahir, Amit Mishra and Mohammed Shami are good players but unlike the other teams, are not big names. Having said that nobody can rule out DD as they have the quality.

Youngsters like Shreyas Iyer, Pawan Negi and Sanju Samson will look at this as an opportunity to do what they do best and continue impressing the national selectors. Inclusion of Chris Morris and ‘four-sixes-in-a-row’ Carlos Brathwaite gives them a good firepower in the bowling as well as batting line-ups.

Kings XI Punjab: KXIP have played well in parts in these eight years of IPL. While they featured in the 2014 Final, they have failed to impress in the other seasons. They have a well-balanced side with Manan Vohra, Murali Vijay, Shaun Marsh at the top; the big-hitters like David Miller and Glenn Maxwell in the middle order and Mitchell Johnson, Sandeep Sharma, Axar Patel in the bowling front. They bought Mohit Sharma, Kyle Abbott who further strengthen their bowling department. Virender Sehwag, who played in last year’s IPL is appointed as their mentor.

Kolkata Knight Riders: The Gautam Gambhir-led side has won the competition two times till now and will look to win it for the third time. They have a side who has been playing with each other for a long time and look a strong team on paper. They have added big-hitting Kiwi batsman Colin Munro, Jason Holder and Jaidev Unadkat in their squad. Players like Shakib-al-Hasan, Andre Russell, Yusuf Pathan and Manish Pandey are big names now and if they play well, they can be the title contenders.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: There are two things common between Trent Boult, Ashish Nehra, Mustafizur Rahman and Barinder Sran. First is that they are all left arm fast bowlers and second is that they will play together for Sunrisers Hyderabad in this year’s IPL.

Led by David Warner, SRH has a mix of experienced and new players. Inclusion of Yuvraj Singh is a big plus while Eoin Morgan, Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques give the batting strength to the team. Kane Williamson, if given a chance, can be an asset for the team but SRH thinking tank would have a decision to make.

Rising Pune Supergiants: CSK was a major team in the IPL having featured in the finals six times and winning the competition two times so far. Obviously MS Dhoni’s new side will play the same style of cricket. Plus, they have Stephen Fleming as their coach.

Talking about the new side, they have players like Ajinkya Rahane, Steven Smith, Faf du Plessis, Kevin Pietersen, R Ashwin who are big names in international cricket. They have good local talent in Rajat Bhatia, Ankit Sharma, Murugan Ashwin to name a few. If these guys gel well, there is no stopping this team for sure!

Gujarat Lions: The second new team of this year’s IPL is Gujarat Lions! The team will be led by Suresh Raina and he has former teammates Brendon McCullum, Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo and Dwayne Smith with him.

They also have James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Dale Steyn, Dinesh Karthik and Pravin Tambe who are a big name in international cricket or have impressed in the IPL. Gujarat Lions have appointed Brad Hodge as their coach and it would be interesting to see how quickly the side gels together.

So this is how the teams have lined up themselves for the ninth edition of IPL and no doubt it will be a great season! The first match will be played on 9th April 2016 between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiants at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.