Some of the recent finals of major cricket tournament have been the clash between Men-in-Yellow and Men-in-Blue. Following the similar trend, the finals of Indian Premier League will be between Rajasthan Royals(Blue) and Chennai SuperKings(Yellow) to decide the champions of the inaugural season.

Road to the finals.

For Rajasthan Royals it has been a fairly tale script so far. Forget about finals, in the beginning of the league no-one really gave them a chance of finishing in top-6 after the double-round-robin phase. Against all speculations the team finished at the top of points table. It all materialized because of well planned strategies combined with inspirational leadership by Shane Warne who motivated the bunch of fringe and young players.

In contrast to Royals, for Chennai Superkings it’s been a roller coaster ride. Starting off as pre-tournament favorites, they won first four games on the trot with handy contribution from mighty Aussies players Hayden, Hussey. After exit of Australians, the team got into a lean patch and lost 3 games in succession. There was slight recovery but the team was given a wake-up call by then bottom-placed Royal Challengers. In a must win situation, the team overcame Deccan Chargers resistance to make into semis. And in semis they totally outclassed Kings-XI-Punjab.

Strategies in Finals
We have seen a lot of surprising strategies like open bowling with a spinner, hit-the-deck-short-ball in tournament so far. Let’s see who comes out with a winning strategy(tailor made for conditions) in the finals. The short-ball strategy applied on bouncy Wankhade stadium pitch may not going to work in finals as it is going to be played in D.Y. Patil stadium.

Players to Watch
Shane Watson, Yusuf Pathan, Sohail Tanveer, Suresh Raina, Albie Morkel.

Who’s day it will be ?
It’s too close to call as the margin between victory and defeat in a twenty20 format is very small. One good or bad over makes a lot of difference. In case a horrible mistake happens unknowingly there will be very less chance for a recovery and it will be more obvious when the team are evenly matched. Moreover the performance or momentum of the previous matches are not going come into picture.

Let’s hope that the contest will be exciting and absorbing, not like the two one-sided semi-finals.

Update: It seems the pillar of Rajasthan’s batting line-up is going to miss the finals due to hamstring injury.