The upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is going to be a must watch for the majority of the cricket fans because of the 2 primary reasons. One, the teams have been revamped in the IPL 2018 players auction and because of the same reason three of the IPL franchise have appointed new skippers for the 11th edition of the cash-rich league. The other one being the excitement to find out the strategies of the newly appointed captains. The 3 teams which will be having new captains in IPL 2018 are Delhi Daredevils (DD), Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Kings XI Punjab (KXIP).
DD will be led by Gautam Gambhir, KKR will be led by Dinesh Karthik while Ravichandran Ashwin will be leading the KXIP team. Apart from Gambhir and Karthik, Ashwin will be leading an IPL team for the first time. Gautam and Karthik have even led Delhi, while the former led them in 2009 and in some matches of 2010, Karthik took over from Gambhir in 2010, but lost his role for some years got the job back in 2014 but again just for a few games. Both of them had decent captaincy stints but, nothing much of which they can be proud of.
Also read: Delhi Daredevils – The Ultimate Underachievers
Captaincy records
When it comes of captaincy, Gambhir had led Delhi in 19 games out of which they had won 11 while in 8 games they had to face a loss and hence his winning percentage comes out to be ~58. But, when it comes to KKR, Gambhir’s captaincy record tends to increase as he has been considered as one of the most successful skippers in the history of IPL since he took over the captaincy of KKR in 2011. he had led them in 122 matches out of which they had won 68 games while they had to face loss in 51 matches and 1 match didn’t saw a result and a match got tied as well. Despite the fact that his winning percentage is meager 57 while captaining KKR, Gauti has helped them to lift the coveted trophy 2012 and 2014, which is a sheer add-on to his illustrious captaincy cap.
On the other hand, Karthik’s captaincy record is pretty demoralizing as in the 6 matches in which he led the DD squad, they have managed to taste the victory in just 2 games. While Ashwin has never led an IPL team.
Individual records
In terms of individual performances, Gambhir is 4th highest run-getter in the first decade of IPL with a strike rate of 124 in 147 innings he has amassed 4132 IPL runs. While Dinesh has scored 2903 runs at a decent strike rate of 126 in 134 innings, Ashwin has taken 111 scalps in 81 innings by maintaining an impressive economy rate of just 6.5. On an individual front, these three have been pretty impressive but, on the leadership front, they will have to through some tough challenges in IPL 2018, especially Karthik and Ashwin, who don’t have the captaincy experience like Gambhir.
Also read: Kings XI Punjab – The Spin is King
Captaincy Challenges
Gambhir has always been a proactive captain on the field, he likes to take control of the game as they never shy away from doing shocking bowling changes or setting unconventional field. Al those things get the appreciation as he has been able to produce results with that and at the end, that’s all what matters to a team. But this year, while leading the Delhi Daredevils, he will find some difficulties as the squad is pretty young and the players aren’t regrouped as the team management has gone for a completely different looking squad as compared to last year. If he manages to regroup them, then he knows how to take the ball in his court with his immense experience.
On the other hand, Karthik and Ashwin will have a completely different set of challenges as they have never led an IPL team for a longer period of time, it will take time for them to understand the best approach to go forward in the match. Creating multiple plans for a single match will become crucial as sometimes a T20 match changes in a matter of an over or so. For Ashwin, the bigger challenge will be how he manages the senior pros like Chris Gayle and Yuvraj Singh as there are certain chances that Gayle will not find a spot in the starting XI of KXIP at least in the early stages of the tournament. And with KKR squad looking injury, hit it will be difficult for Dinesh to find a right balance in the squad.
However, after looking at the squads of all the three franchises, it seems the Ashwin’s job will become a bit easier as their squad is pretty balanced with a perfect mix of young and veteran players. DD’s team is also pretty decent and with a leader like Gambhir, they are bound to do something good this season. On the other hand, Karthik’s job will be the toughest as he needs to maintain the legacy of Gambhir in KKR, which is a daunting task to do. Ashwin and Gautam will also be looking to help their team to lift the IPL trophy for the first time for their respective teams.
Also read: Kolkata Knight Riders – King’s Men Ready For Crusade
Kolkata Knight Riders’ IPL 2018 squad:
Dinesh Karthik (c), Robin Uthappa (vc), Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Chris Lynn, Mitchell Starc, Kuldeep Singh Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Nitish Rana, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shivam Mavi, Mitchell Johnson, Shubman Gill, Ranganath Vinay Kumar, Rinku Singh, Cameron Delport, Javon Searles, Apoorv Wankhade, Ishank Jaggi
Kings XI Punjab 2018 squad:
Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin (c), Andrew Tye, Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Karun Nair, Mujeeb Zadran, Ankit Singh Rajpoot, David Miller, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Singh Sran, Yuvraj Singh, Christopher Gayle, Ben Dwarshuis, Akshdeep Nath, Manoj Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Manzoor Dar, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar
Delhi Daredevils IPL 2018 squad:
Gautam Gambhir (c), Rishabh Pant, Chris Morris, Shreyas Iyer, Glenn Maxwell, Kagiso Rabada, Amit Mishra, Shahbaz Nadeem, Vijay Shankar, Rahul Tewatia, Mohammad Shami, Trent Boult, Colin Munro, Daniel Christian, Jason Roy, Naman Ojha, Prithvi Shaw, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Avesh Khan, Abhishek Sharma, Jayant Yadav, Harshal Patel, Manjot Kalra, Sandeep Lamichhane, Sayan Ghosh
