IPL - these three letters signify a greater deal nowadays! Counting for the Star studded show has already begun. Less than 40 days to go for IPL! Speculating the winner can be a hard guess. Here are some points to look upon in predicting the winner.

Anybody’s game: 8 teams, 14 matches per team in the league stage. So a team can always make a comeback even after the initial hiccups. Here is where the consistency of the teams will come into play.

Winning with top order hitting: We have seen some of the biggest totals in T20 being scaled down on the same day it was measured by the team batting first! So once you have the top order doing some hard hitting it is upto the lower order carry on the tempo and reach the target. So it is very crucial for the top order to fire and if you have some four hard hitters in your team, job is done most of the times.

Turn Around in last few overs: We have seen some good show of cricket in t20 world cup in South Africa. Remember matches India v/s Pakistan (league) and India v/s South Africa. Even after restricting India to a total of around 150 and required run rate being less than 8, both the teams did not finish off the job. This stresses the importance of some good bowling

Formula for Success : You have the option of choosing 4 overseas players per match. Whom would you choose - 2 bowlers and 2 batsmen or 3 batsmen and 1 bowler or any other combination? T20 is not only a batsman’s game as it is publicized, even the best of teams in T20 like India, Australia have faltered and bowled out for cheap totals!

Glue for the team: They say individual superstars do not make a holistic team. Members of the team have come from different national, cultural, age backgrounds and have many achievements to their name and are superstars in their own right. So, whichever team binds its star members with a glue for common passion and vision will see the light of June 1, 2008 (day of IPL final!).

Leadership Matters : A team is as good as his captain, goes the old saying. But when you have more than one captain, what would be the end result. Both extremes are possible. Imagine Ponting playing under Ganguly(Kolkata), Stephen Fleming playing under MS Dhoni(Chennai). Best example of this would be Indian team one for ODI world cup and another for T20 world cup. Needless to say that dashing Dhoni had less problems with dealing with the young and new team!

Young Legs : T20 is ‘Too fast, Too furious’ film of cricketwood! So in this area young turks score over golden oldies. This is similar to how young India and Pakistan teams made it to the finals of T20 world cup, with dashing strokeplay and accurate bowling

T20 Experience: Final and the most important factor, how many of the IPL heroes in various teams have T20 experience? Most of the Indian stars surely come in the latter category. This could be the deciding factor in the IPL matches.

Current international stars in IPL are listed below
Bangalore - Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Jacques Kallis, Zaheer Khan, Mark Boucher, Cameron White, Wasim Jaffer, Dale Steyn, Nathan Bracken, Praveen Kumar
Hyderabad - Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Heschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi, Scott Styris, VVS Laxman, Rohit Sharma, Chamara Silva, RP Singh, Chaminda Vaas, Nuwan Zoysa
Chennai - MS Dhoni, Muralitharan, Mathew Hayden, Jacob Oram, Stephen Fleming, Parthiv Patel, Joginder Sharma, Albie Morkel, Suresh Raina, Makhaya Ntini
Mumabi - Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasurya, Harbhajan Singh,Shaun Pollock,Robin Uthappa, Lasith Malinga, Dilhara Fernando
Jaipur - Shane Warne,Graeme Smith, Younis Khan, Kamran Akmal, Yusuf Pathan,Mohammed Kaif, Munaf Patel
Kolkata - Sourav Ganguly, Shoaib Akthar, Ricky Ponting, Brendon McCullum,Chris Gayle, Ajit Agarkar, David Hussey, Ishant Sharma, Murali Kartik, Umar Gul
Mohali - Irfan Pathan,Bret Lee, Yuvaraj Singh,Kumara Sangakkara, Sree Santh, Mahela Jayawardane, Piyush Chawla, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Simon Katich, Romesh Powar
Delhi - Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Manoj Tiwary, Md Asif,Daniel Vettori, Dinesh Karthik, Shoaib Malik,Glenn McGrath, AB de Villiers, Tilakarathne Dilshan, Farveez Maharoof

Considering all these factors my top 3 favourite teams would
1.Mohali
2.Hyderabad
3.Delhi

And the darkhorse of course is Jaipur and you know why?