Who would have thought that last year’s bottom two teams are going to be this year’s finalists. Bangalore and Deccan have proved everyone wrong and made their way to the finals. Its been a wornderful last few matches for Kumble and co. His ‘Test Team’ has won 7 out of the last 9 games. Jumbo himself has played really well. Dravid and Kallis have also been in good form. Dravid’s innings in the semi final was punctuated with those lovely on drives we have grown fond of watching. Manish Pandey is a gem of a player, who has come good at the right time.

I am going to be rooting for Bangalore in the final, just because of those two blokes Kumble and Dravid. It would be wonderful to see them winning a T20 tournament. Bangalore have only one thing to be afraid of, that man Gilchrist. His innnings against Delhi in the semi final was simply outstanding. But Gilchrist is known to play like that and he is the only one in the Deccan Chargers who will be giving Kumble and co a sleepless night. True there are Symonds and Rohit but they havent been playing that well.

It would be a lovely to see Kumble opening the bowling and then dismissing Gilchrist, most probably with Gilchrist going for a slog sweep. It would be also lovely to see Dravid score a 50 in the big final. It would be a fitting reply to critics who think these greats are just fit for Test Cricket. On current form Dravid walks into the Indian T20 team, its another matter that selectors think otherwise.

Teams

Royal Challengers Bangalore: (probable) 1 Manish Pandey, 2 Jacques Kallis, 3 Roelof van der Merwe, 4 Rahul Dravid, 5 Ross Taylor, 6 Virat Kohli, 7 Robin Uthappa, 8 Mark Boucher (wk), 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 R Vinay Kumar, 11 Anil Kumble (capt.).

Deccan Chargers: 1 Adam Gilchrist (capt./wk), 2 Herschelle Gibbs, 3 T Suman, 4 Rohit Sharma, 5 Andrew Symonds, 6 Azhar Bilakhia/D Ravi Teja, 7 Venugopal Rao, 8 Harmeet Singh, 9 Pragyan Ojha, 10 Ryan Harris, 11 RP Singh. 

Timings

Start time 16.30 local, 14:30 GMT, 20:00 IST

Follow us on Twitter to get all the updates – crichotline@twitter