The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Royal Challengers will be a strong outfit: Mallya

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Royal Challengers will be a strong outfit: Mallya

Barcelona: Vijay Mallya believes that his Bangalore team, Royal Challengers, will be a strong outfit in the forthcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket.

“I know that a lot of people are calling my team as a ‘Test team’ because I don’t have flashy and explosive players, but I know that we have a good team. When I sat down with Rahul Dravid, he asked me ‘do you want stars or do you want performers?’ And I told him that I need performers. And that’s what he has done. I am excited and he is thrilled about our team,” Mallya said on the sidelines of the Force India testing at the Circuit De Catalunya.

Mallya spoke about his team’s strengths.

“We have a potent bowling attack in Dale Steyn, Nathan Bracken, Zaheer Khan and Anil Kumble. We have a good middle order in Rahul, Chanderpaul and good all-rounders like Jacques Kallis, Cameron White and Praveen Kumar. We also rate Wasim Jaffer high.

“We have the requisite experience and Dravid believes that his team has the players who can do well in the Twenty20 format as most of them have proven themselves in the Test arena. I regret missing out on Robin Uthappa. If he was there, my team would have been 100 per cent complete as now it is only 95 per cent,” Mallya said. — Principal Correspondent

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