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Gambhir excited by KKR's UAE challenge
Kolkata Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir is thrilled at the prospect of playing in the UAE when the first leg of the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League is held in the country later this month.
Current Indian cricketers have rarely played in the UAE with the national team playing just one series – the DLF Cup against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi in 2006 – in the last 14 years.
Indian teams had been regular visitors for a series of one-day tournaments in Sharjah until 2000 when the match-fixing scandal hit the sport and the Indian government stopped the team from touring UAE.
However, all that has changed with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) deciding to pitch tent in the Emirates for their lucrative Twenty20 league as its dates clashed with the general elections in the country.
The IPL will kick-off in Abu Dhabi with defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI) taking on the Knight Riders on April 16, a game Gambhir feels is the perfect starter.
“It’s an exciting opportunity as I have never played in UAE before,” Gambhir said yesterday. “Also we will be playing Mumbai Indians in the opening match which is a good thing compared to playing them in Mumbai in front of packed crowd.
“It will be a match where there will be no home advantage or away disadvantage. MI are the defending champions and it will be great to get them off first up,” he said.
The left-handed opener has warmed up nicely for the event with a string of good scores in the domestic Twenty20 league, the Mushtaq Ali Trophy, scoring 162 runs in five matches.
Gambhir is among the top run-getters in the IPL with 2471 runs from 88 matches and currently sits fourth in the list of top IPL run-getters, which is topped by Suresh Raina with 2802 runs from 99 matches.
Meanwhile, Gambhir defended Royal Challengers Bangalore player Yuvraj Singh, who faced flak for his slow batting in India’s World Twenty20 final defeat against Sri Lanka on Sunday.
Yuvraj’s 11 runs off 21 balls hampered India’s run chase as his nation settled for a modest 130-4 which the Sri Lankans chased down easily to claim the title.
“I don’t think any cricketer has criticised Yuvraj. It is the media which has attacked him and we need to be careful about what we say. He has been our greatest match-winners in limited overs cricket,” he said.
Yuvraj was bought by the Royal Challengers for 140 million rupees (Dh8.5m) in the auction two months ago.
All eight IPL teams will be playing five matches each in the first leg in the UAE from April 16-30 before the IPL returns to India from May 2 with the final in Mumbai on June 1.
