The writing seemed to be on the wall as soon as Vijay Mallya had doled out a whopping Rs 15.2 crores at the first round of IPL auctions. Rahul Dravid, Wasim Jaffer, Jacques Kallis, Shivnarine Chanderpaul — Mallya had bought himself a Test team for a Twenty20 tournament. These are batsmen with proven track records, known for their genius to hold innings together. But T20 is a different ballgame and they have been found wanting, languishing at the bottom of the table after eight games.

Earlier this week, they sacked their CEO, Charu Sharma, with Brijesh Patel taking over. Will it make any difference? Unlikely, for their problems, for now, seem to be purely cricketing.

The auction

Mallya shelled out $900,000 for Jacques Kallis, a player untested in T20. Automatically, icon Dravid got 15 per cent more than that — around $1.03m. They had spent 40 per cent of their $5m budget on two players you’d rarely back to get 100 off 50 deliveries between them. Incidentally, the Rajasthan Royals spent around $2.95m on eight players at the auction. Bangalore’s only real T20 buy was Kiwi Ross Taylor — who was available only for the first three games.

Test effect

Day One of the tournament, and their problems started at the top. Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer have opened for India in Test cricket, but they seemed an oddity in this short format. They’ve tried and changed things around since then. In eight games, Dravid has batted at number 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 — a sure sign that the skipper isn’t sure what the best spot for him is. Jaffer has scored a couple of 50s, as has Dravid, but neither has managed to play a match-winning knock. Dravid’s strike-rate of 118 is impressive by his standards. Kallis and Jaffer are there and thereabouts too, with strike-rates of 115 and 111 respectively. But in a tournament where the top 50 strike-rates range from 129 to 400 (Dinesh Salunkhe has four off one ball, in case you’re wondering), Bangalore’s main batsmen are falling short.

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