Cricket experts have reiterated numerous times over the years that a team which ‘looks good’ on paper, may not be the same on the field. Well, Deccan chargers have been the perfect illustration for this statement. After getting on board some of the top international players in their line-up on historic auction day, the team Hyderabad was voted by many as one of favorites to win the championship. But in reality the extreme opposite has happened. The team has finished the league being at bottom of the points table with only 2 wins !

What went wrong ?

• The team never looked like a unit. Apart from sparks from some individual players the team’s performance was lack luster to say the least. The major reason for this was failure of VVS Laxman’s captaincy skills with respect to handling of resources. In addition to this the team didn’t have a proper coach. Robin Singh is definitely not the right man to mentor/motivate a team with star players like Gibbs and Gilchrist.
• Lack of specialist bowlers. Apart from R P Singh no one really was came close to threatening the opposition batsmen. Looking at the number of matches the team lost in last over, this factor was the major reason for team’s downfall.
• Majority of International players underperformed. All rounder Scott Styris couldn’t make an impact in both departments. Herschelle Gibbs didn’t fire in most of the matches. Shahid Afridi’s performance was a major disappointment - the man-of-series of T20 world cup proved his unreliability yet again. He has been dismissed eight times in the 34 balls he has faced in the tournament !

Key moments

• Defending 200+ score against Rajasthan Royals, Andrew Symonds threw the match away by conceding 17 runs of the last over.
• Against Royal Challengers at Bangalore, the team was cruising to victory. But 2-3 quick wickets put the brakes on the progress and the team lost the match by 3 runs!

Being on the receiving end after two close games in initial stage of the league turned out to be a major setback to moral of the team. They hardly recovered from this.

Success stories:

• Rohith Sharma - ‘the next big thing of Indian cricket’ turned out to be a lone warrior for the Chargers. Totally he scored 404 runs which included four fifties, unfortunately all his fifties ended up for losing cause.
• The other revelation was left arm bowler Pragyan Ojha, he and RP Singh were the only threatening bowlers.
• Venugopal Rao had a nice outing by scoring 242 runs in nine innings at an overall strike rate of 147.56. The right had batsman has used Gilly’s squash ball technique for improvisation. He managed to take the team very close to victory from hopeless situations in two games.

Balance sheet:(in INR)
Revenue: 64 crores, Expenditure: 82 crores … Net Loss: 18 crores.

Strategies/Tasks for next season

• Hire a professional all round coach for recharging the players.
• Hunt for good specialist bowlers.
• Get Andrew Symonds for full season.
• Rethink captaincy. Gilchrist and Laxman both have been questionable this season.