Rajasthan Royals lose warm up match to Cape Cobras 1
Rajasthan Royals had a warm up match against Cape Cobras today named “Clash of the Champions” . Cape Cobras are the South African domestic T20 champions and Rajasthan Royals were the winners of IPL season 1 and so it was marketed as the clash of the the winners. The match started interestingly with Cape Cobras winning the toss and deciding to bat. The Rajasthan Royals team was mainly filled with the Indian domestic players of Rajasthan Royals. The Indian pacers of Rajasthan Royals started out well with Amit Singh, Trivedi and Kamran Khan. Kamran Khan was more prominent of the lot although he bowled only a single over giving only one run and taking a wicket. His pace was good and he was also extracting good swing from the wicket. The Cobras struggled against the Indian pacers and were 65/5 after 11.5 overs. But then their batsmen started hitting well and the Cobras ended at a respectable score of 142/8 in their allotted 20 overs.
The Rajasthan Royals batsmen were quite impressive initially with Victorian batsman Rob Quiney (34 off 22 balls) hitting the Cobras for fours and sixes. But then the rest of the Royals batsmen got out cheaply with some very good bowling and fielding performance by the Cobras. Shane Warne (21 off 19 balls) tried to save the innings but it was too late. At last they got all out in 19 overs for 115 runs and the Cobras won the match by 27 runs.
However, the positives of the game for Rajasthan Royals was that their international players looked in good from with Quiney, Warne and Henderson looking good. The other good thing was the Indian bowlers in RR squad bowled some good spells too especially Kamran Khan and Amit Singh.
The Rajasthan Royals squad are looking a good unit though they do not look as powerful as the other squads and I doubt if they would be able to retain their title this year. Let us hope that the Rajasthan Royals squad performs well when they play their full side in the IPL T20 season 2.