Bangalore, May 9: 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.

Foreign hands

While each team seems to be struggling to build their squads around just four foreign players, the Royal Challengers seem to be having more trouble than most figuring out who their best four are. None of their imports have played all eight games — Taylor left after the first four, Kallis and Boucher have played seven each, Dale Steyn has played five, Chanderpaul and Cameron White three each, Misbah-ul-Haq two and Ashley Noffke one. It hasn’t helped that Chanderpaul and Misbah, two players that Bangalore would have been banking on to provide some real impetus, have failed to get going. Chanderpaul, though one of their ‘Test’ stars, was coming off a brilliant run against Sri Lanka in their ODI series in the Caribbean last month, but has averaged just 8.33 in three knocks, while Misbah, a known T20 specialist — he came close to single-handedly beating India twice in the T20 World Cup — has scored 11 runs in two innings.

Throwing it away

All these factors have added up to make a team that seem to throw away the advantage far too often. Against the Chennai Super Kings, they bowled and batted well in the first 15 overs. Batting first, the Super Kings were 100 for three in 14.4 overs. From there, they went on to score 178 for five. The chase was well on course with the Challengers on 102/1 in 10.5 overs. But from there, they snatched a 13-run defeat. Against Delhi Daredevils too, the Challengers failed to keep their nerve after Dravid and Kallis had brought them close. They went down by 10 runs in that game at the Kotla. Even on Thursday night, chasing a not-so-imposing 129 in 16 overs against Kolkata, they fell short by six runs.

For ‘keeps sake

It was obvious to all that the wicket-keepers’ role would be crucial through the 45 days, and Mark Boucher seemed to be a good buy for the Bangalore camp. Unfortunately, after a couple of beefy hits from the South African’s bat won them their second game against Mumbai, he hasn’t been able to pull off a match-winning knock since. He leads the batting averages for the Royal Challengers with 151 at 37.75, but he’d much rather get back into his usual cool-headed finisher mode.