IPL 2016: Fantasy Championship guide RCB v SRH

When you run a tournament that is worth millions of dollars and still fail to get your fantasy website up and running, you should probably drown yourself in shame. I wish the IPL chairman gets to read this as I have had enough of these technical glitches that the official website has to offer. The website now reads ‘Fantasy IPL will be coming soon. We apologize for the inconvenience’. Well, do you? Three days into the IPL and you still can’t solve the issues? Baffling!

How and when will the website be up still seems to be the million dollar question but despite the rant that I have just gone on, I’ll still wait for the official league to function and favour it to Fandromeda. The official league will have a larger user base and at the end of the day, it’s the ‘official’ league. I do not want to be on BCCIs bad side, you see. Just wait for the confirmation from the IPL side and keep playing the Fandromeda game as well. It just takes a maximum of two extra minutes of your day to maintain two teams; you can do that for the love of the game.

The star studded RCB take on the bowler heavy SRH in tonight’s game at Bangalore. Except probably the first 2 years, RCB have always been the favourites to win the tournament and have somehow always managed to find a way of not making it to the playoffs. The fans, players, and team management would be hoping that Shane Watson’s acquisition might turn the fortunes for them. SRH, on the other hand, have a good top 3 and a good bowling attack, but at the Chinnaswamy the bowlers are mere spectators and thus David Warner, Shikhar Dhawan, and Kane Williamson will have to see them through.

So, this article is going to be a little different from my previous ones, I’ll start off by giving a few suggestion on how you could improve your Fandromeda fantasy side and then just talk about the 3 potential transfers that you could make to your official Fantasy team.

Fandromeda

Transfer out: Manan Vohra, Glenn Maxwell, Amit Mishra, Jos Buttler

Transfer in: Virat Kohli, ABD, David Warner, Yuzvendra Chahal (Uncapped player)

RCB have 4 quality players in Virat Kohli, AB de Villers, Chris Gayle and Shane Watson, all of whom can shower you with bucket loads of points on their day. But the limited amount of transfers will force you to go with a maximum of two of them.

Virat’s recent exploits in the World T20 are enough to guarantee him a free pass into my team. The man has grown in confidence and stature and on a flat deck; there would be no stopping him.

I am not sure as to where and how will Shane Watson fit into the RCB setup. But knowing Kohli, I think there is a slight chance that he would get his 4 best players in the top 4 batting positions. And thus, Chris Gayle would open with Watson followed by Kohli at 3 and ABD at 4. But as I can’t be very sure of this, I do not go for Watson. His bowling wouldn’t be of too much help on a flat Chinnaswamy pitch and if he is pushed down the order, I don’t think he would give you a lot of points.

Leaving out Chris Gayle could prove to be suicidal but I have to be brave and do it. And the major reason for doing it is the potent bowling attack of SRH. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar has a brilliant record against Gayle and Mustafizur’s clever variations could also cause problems for the Jamaican southpaw.

I will get in ABD for sure because I believe that no matter what the batting position, the two best batsmen of the game will perform.

From SRH, I get in David Warner because he is the only batsman in the Sunrisers team that can actually take the game away from the opposition. Williamson can play the anchor role but won’t give you as many points as Warner and Dhawan’s form just doesn’t support his case. All the bowlers will have a tough time in Bangalore and I wouldn’t want to take my chances with them.

For the uncapped player, I select Harshal Patel. I wanted to go with Deepak Hooda but for some reason he has been listed just as a batsman. Chahal and Harshal are the only two uncapped players who would get the full opportunity to display their skills and as Harshal comes in for just 65k, I go for him.

Bowling Captain: Harshal Patel (The only bowler)

Batting Captain: Virat Kohli (The safest choice)

Official Fantasy league

I am pretty sure it won’t be up tomorrow as well but if it is, just bring in ABD, Warner, and Kohli into your side and do not transfer out the KKR or MI players (except maybe Buttler as he wouldn’t be able to handle spin much efficiently).

The official league will still be my first preference and this article has largely been about Fandromeda because there has been no official communication from the IPL team of the exact start date of the official fantasy league.

Do check out this space tomorrow, hopefully for some official IPL Fantasy league tips!

Happy team picking!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal views and opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of CricTracker and CT does not assume any implied responsibility or liability for the same.