IPL Team Previews: Delhi Daredevils

As the IPL season draws closer, it becomes more and more important to take a look at the teams. So I decided to start with the Delhi Daredevils (DD).

Though my favourite team is Bangalore, basically because of Rahul Dravid, I love the way Delhi played during the previous season.

They have also have best bowling attack to boast about with Glenn McGrath, Farveez Mahroof, Daniel Vettori, Amit Sharma, Pradeep Sangwan, etc.

Their batting is no less great with Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, AB De Villiers,Tilakaratne Dilshan, Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, etc.

So, let's look at their top strengths and top problems:

Strengths

1. These guys have the right attitude as well. All the players are aggressive or assertive. Many of them are in form as well.

2. They also have a brilliant opening combination in Sehwag and Gambhir, which has a lot of experience together and gels well.

3. In McGrath and Vettori, they have two absolute misers. Both of them have an economy rate of under 7. This means that, if both play, they will have have about 40 percent (8 overs) of their fielding innings going at a very meagre run rate.

Weaknesses

1. After the transfer of Shikhar Dhawan, the team's No. 3 batsman last season, the openers will face a lot pressure. Last season, one of the main reasons why the team lost was that the batsmen after Dhawan were highly inconsistent. Though this season most of the players are in form, this is something to be careful about.

2. Mohommad Asif was another reason for their success, but he is banned for this season for reasons we all know. This means Mahroof will take the new ball. He is good, but often inconsistent. Also with McGrath not having played since last year's tournament, it would be tough to expect him to be at his best. So, their bowling might end up just getting thwacked around.

3.  The team's local players are not people who have been the backbone of the team's success, with the exception of Dhawan. Even Amit Mishra didn't do anything great, other than that hat trick, which came in the last over of that match and with the odds of winning being in the DD's favour.

So, overall, this is a team which will be a suprise package in both cases, if it does badly or it does well. This is a team which would be difficult to predict.