The Southpaws

It’s the IPL season. 20:20 games are a bowler’s nightmare and a batsman’s delight. It is raining fours and sixes in grounds of India. It doesn’t matter if you are right handed or left handed as long as you can hit boundaries. Cricket is a batsman’s game. But IPL endorses it more than any other format of the game. Unless you are a bowler of the calibre of someone like Malinga who can bowl well directed yorkers at will, you will invariably get some stick.

There is whole lot of players from different countries playing for ten different teams. Since there are many southpaws successfully playing the game, it will be interesting to make a team comprising left handers. Players batting and bowling left handed are not many. Majority of them are ambidexterous. That is they either bowl or bat left handed,

So I ‘ve decided to make a team with left handed batsmen who will not bowl if they are right handed bowlers and left handed bowlers who also bat left handed. This is because all the eleven players have to bat. It looks odd if someone bats right handed in a team of lefties.

So here are my choices. As per the IPL rules only four foreign players can be in the team.

Gautam Gambhir
Michael Hussey
Kumar Sangakkara
Suresh Raina
Yuvraj Singh
Ravindra Jadeja
Irfan Pathan
Daniel Vettori
Iqbal Abdulla
Doug Bollinger
Sreenath Aravind

Reserves: Adam Gilchrist, Chris Gayle, Shaun Marsh, J P Duminy, Shakib Al Hassan, Wayne Parnell, Shadkab Jakati, Jesse Ryder, Parthiv Patel, Abishek Nayar, Saurabh Tiwari, Pragyan Ojha.

Some bowlers like Zaheer Khan, R P Singh, Jaidev and Prashant Parameshwaran don’t find a place in the team as they bat right handed. I chose Michael Hussey over Chris Gayle as he is more consistent. But in the present form I think Gayle would be the choice. Suresh Raina will lend solidity to the middle order. But both Gayle and Raina will not bowl as they are right hand bowlers. The team has good left arm spinners in Vettori, Abdulla, Jadeja and Yuvraj. Pace bowling may look a bit weak with only Bollinger and Irfan being the experienced ones. Aravind is a young promising fast bowler. In case he fails to fire, one can substitute a foreign player with Wayne Parnell.

Who will be the captain? I prefer Indian captains. Gambhir is doing better than Yuvraj as captain now. So he will be the captain. Sangakkara and Vettori are the choices among the foreign players.