The Yuvraj Singh lead Mohali team have a very promising team. The most interesting thing is that the team is very young overall, with only 3 players being above 30 years of age! The owners, which includes Preity Zinta and a bunch of other businessmen seem to have done their homework rather well.

The team, which is rumoured to be called the “Kings XI Punjab”, has a very strong batting line up with lots of big hitters. Yuvraj himself, followed by Jayawardene, Simon Katich and the young and brash Luke Pomersbach. Even the U-22 players, Karan Goel and Uday Kaul have a lot of potential as batsman. Even the young Tanmay Srivastava, top scored at the U-19 world cup.

It’ll be interesting to see who opens the innings. They have a lot of choice and can probably try lots of combination to see what works. The WicketKeeping, again like the Jaipur team, looks a bit suspect. They’ve got Sangakara and the as-yet-unproven Uday Kaul as their only options.

But the bowling is where the team’s real strength lies. They’ve got a very sharp pace attack, with Irfan Pathan, Bret Lee and Sreeshanth all capable of deadly attacks. Kyle Mills, another young-and-upcoming fast-medium bowler has shown very good accuracy recently, which is very useful in the Twenty20 format.

The only doubtful area is whether the very deep pace line up of the Mohali team is going to be useful. Considering that the pitches will all probably be very flat and tend to favour spinners, it is debatable how much trouble the fast bowlers can cause in the short 20 overs. They do have some spin capability, with Piyush Chawla, Ramesh Powar and even Yuvraj himself capable of some spin, but it looks shaky.

All in all, I think the Mohali team looks very powerful. If Yuvraj can play to the team’s strengths, this team will be the one to beat.

Full Team

Yuvraj Singh (Captain)
Mahela Jayawardene
Ramnaresh Sarwan
Simon Katich
Luke Pomersbach
Karan Goel
Uday Kaul
Tanmay Srivastav
Kumar Sangakkara
Irfan Pathan
Ramesh Powar
James Hopes
Brett Lee
Sreesanth
Piyush Chawla
VRV Singh
Kyle Mills
Ajitesh Argal