Royal Challengers Bangalore

Royal Challengers Bangalore is a franchise, cricket team based in the city of Bangalore. The team is owned by the business magnate Vijay Mallya, through his flagship firm UB Group.Anil Kumble is the captain, Rahul Dravid is the team's Icon Player, while Ray Jennings, is the coach.

Franchise history

Indian Premier League is a cricket tournament being organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and backed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).For the inaugural tournament held in Apr-Jun 2008, the BCCI had finalised a list of 8 teams who will be participating in the tournament. The teams representing 8 different cities of India, including Bangalore, were put up on auction in Mumbai on 20 February 2008 and the Bangalore team was won by Vijay Mallya, who paid US$111.6 million for it. This was the second highest bid for a team in the IPL, next only to Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries' bid of $111.9 million for the Mumbai team. Bollywood actresses Katrina Kaif and Deepika Padukone, and Sandalwood film stars Ramya and Puneeth Rajkumar are the brand ambassadors of the team.

2008 IPL Season

The team won 4 matches in this season, losing 10 matches and managed to secure only the last but one position in the points table. Only one of their batsman, Rahul Dravid managed to score more than 300 runs in the tournament and they had to even bench their costliest foreign player, Jacques Kallis, for a few of the matches due to his poor form.The string of failures mid-way through the season led to the sacking of the CEO, Charu Sharma who was replaced with Brijesh Patel.Even coach Venkatesh Prasad was about to be sacked, but he saved his job by publicly apologising for the team's failure. Vijay Mallya went on to publicly criticise Dravid and Sharma for the failures by saying that they had not selected the right team. He regretted that he had made a mistake by not getting involved in the selection of the team.They were the only team in the IPL to try out 11 opening combinations in 14 games. Eventually the chief cricketing officer, Martin Crowe resigned.It was decided that from 2009 IPL session onwards the team would be coached by former South Africa Coach Ray Jennings.

2009 IPL Season

The team started with a win against defending champions Rajasthan Royals but quickly went on to loose a few games afterwards under the captaincy of Kevin Pietersen. However, he had to leave for national duty and captaincy was taken over by former Indian Test captain Anil Kumble. The team fortunes reversed and they beat Deccan Chargers to secure a 3rd place after the round robin stage in IPL2. In the semi final they beat the Chennai Super Kings convincingly who were led by M.S.Dhoni and crushed their hopes of winning the title. However they lost the final by 6 runs, in a close match to Deccan Chargers. Also Manish Pandey became the first Indian to score a century in IPL when he made 114*(73) against Deccan Chargers in their last match in the league phase.

2010 IPL Season

Challengers had a mixed round of success in the third edition of the IPL. The team slumped to a defeat in their first match against the Knight Riders but came back strongly to win the next four games which started off with the highest successful run chase in IPL 2010 and the second highest successful run chase in IPL history against Kings XI Punjab at Bangalore. This win was followed by comprehensive wins against the Rajasthan Royals, Mumbai Indians and the Chennai Super Kings. Kallis and Uthappa were in tremendous form with the bat while Kumble was miserly with the ball, Steyn fast and accurate and Vinay Kumar wily picking wickets at the right time. However the team lost the next two games and after a roller coaster ride managed to sneak into the semis for the second consecutive season by virtue of their healthy net run rate beating Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders both of whom had equal number of wins and losses as the Bangalore outfit. In the semifinal the Challengers put on a shoddy display after beginning well to concede 77 runs during the last 5 overs of the Mumbai innings and did not bat well to loose the match by 35 runs. The team had the final laugh after they beat the defending champions Deccan Chargers against whom they lost the previous year's final, by beating them all end's up by 9 wickets to finish third for the season and thereby book a slot in the 2010 Champions League Twenty20.

Etymology

Vijay Mallya wanted to associate one of his top-selling liquor brands, either No. 1 McDowell's or Royal Challenge with the team.The latter was chosen, hence the name. The jersey colours of the team are red and golden yellow, the same as the Karnataka state flag, and the logo consists of the RC emblem with "Royal Challengers Bangalore" in standard format.

Theme Song

The first theme song of Royal Challengers was Jeetenge Hum Shaan Se sung by Kunal Ganjawala and Sunidhi Chowhan. However Another unofficial fanclub's theme song called Thakkath Geete has been composed in support of the Red & Yellow team, with the help of TV9. However, the team anthem was created in 2009 by Rediffusion Y&R Bangalore and is called Game for More. The music video was directed by Sanjay Shetty and Vishal from Opticus Films, music was directed by Amit Trivedi (DEV.D and Aamir fame) and lyrics were penned by Anshu Sharma a.k.a. anshubaba from Rediffusion Y&R.

Players

1st IPL Auction

The players in the team (except for Rahul Dravid, who was the Icon Player), were selected in an auction conducted by BCCI on 20 February 2008. South Africa's Jacques Kallis at $900,000 became the costliest player to be selected to play for the Royal Challengers. This meant that Rahul Dravid, being the Icon Player would be paid $1,035,000 (15% more than the highest bid player in the team). Other players selected included the then Indian Test cricket captain Anil Kumble along with his team-mates Praveen Kumar and Zaheer Khan, West Indian Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Aussies Nathan Bracken and Cameron White, South Africa's Mark Boucher (Wicket Keeper) and Dale Steyn. The team also included Pakistan cricket team's vice captain Misbah-ul-Haq although he wasn't in the playing 11 for most part of the tournament.

Transfers & New Signings

On the last day of the 2008-2009 transfer window, Zaheer Khan was swapped with Robin Uthappa of Mumbai Indians, with no money exchanged. The team also acquired Karnataka batsman Gaurav Dhiman from Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan fast bowler Pankaj Singh from Rajasthan Royals. The team also signed Eagles fast bowler Dillon du Preez as a replacement for Zaheer Khan.

The team management also suspended the contract of Pakistani player and current vice-captain of the Pakistan Cricket Team, Misbah-ul-Haq where as some other owners have decided to terminate the contracts of Pakistani players.

2nd IPL Auction

Kevin Pietersen made his way into RCB as one of the costliest players in IPL history. Kevin Pietersen was valued at $1.55m over a base price of $1.35m. Also Jesse Ryder from New Zealand was acquired in the auction at $160,000.

3rd IPL Auction

Challengers were among the least active during the 2010 auction by signing Irish batsman Eoin Morgan for $220,000 as the only acquisition.

Captaincy

Vijay Mallya, the owner of Bangalore Royal Challengers, has kept the captaincy options open. Minutes after picking up Kevin Pietersen at USD 1.55 million, Mallaya said he was happy with the price he got him at. "The captaincy options are open. The team management will take a decision on it." The Royal Challengers, who finished second last the previous year, were led by Rahul Dravid. On 21 March 2009 Vijay Mallya announced that Kevin Pietersen was replacing Rahul Dravid as the team captain for the 2009 season. The reason given was Dravid's absence in the league due to family related reasons.However many suspect that the change in captaincy is the result of the poor performance of the team in the first season of the Indian Premier League. On the 30th April 2009, Anil Kumble was named the captain of the team for the remaining games of the IPL Season 2, due to Kevin Pietersen's absence to play for England against the West Indies. Since then performance of Bangalore Royal Challengers has been instrumental and the turn around has been superb. The challengers found great success under Kumble's leadership.

Champions League Twenty20

The Twenty20 Champions League is an international Twenty20 cricket competition between clubs from India, Australia, England, South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and West Indies. The competition was launched in 2008 as a response to the success of national Twenty20 domestic cricket leagues, most notably the Indian Premier League

2008 season

The Royal Challengers did not qualify for the Champions League during the 2008 Season. However the tournament was cancelled due to 2008 Mumbai Attacks but qualifying teams from India, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were compensated with the losses incurred.

2009 season

On account of emerging as the runners-up of the 2009 season of the Indian Premier League, the team participated in the inaugural edition of the T20 Champions League, along with two other Indian teams; the winners of IPL 2009, Deccan Chargers and Delhi Daredevils, the toppers of the league-stage points table.

They had a limited amount of success during the tournament being placed in Group C for their first round. They lost to Cape Cobras in their first match but came back strongly to comprehensively beat Otago, to enter the second round. The results from the pairings during the first round were carried forward to the league stage hence the Royal Challengers eventually crashed out from the second round after finishing with 2 points from 3 matches which included a loss to the Victorian Bushrangers, a victory over the Delhi DareDevils and the loss against the Cape Cobras carried forward from the first round.