Wanted young team: Mallya

Jan 10, 2011 |

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Jan. 9: Having opted to overlook Rahul Dravid, Royal Challengers Bangalore owner Vijay Mallya pr-ovided an insight into their strategy saying they were focussing on a ‘young team’. Dravid didn’t have many takers in the auction and was studiedly ignored by RCB and if not for Rajasthan Royals’ $500K bid, Dravid may have gone the Sourav Ganguly way.

Going for young blood seems to be the mantra of the franchisees and it certainly showed in the RCB team-sheet. They retained India’s most promising player Virat Kohli and went all out for 21-year-old hard-hitting batsman Saurabh Tiwary for a whopping 1.6 million.

But it was apparent that they had no issues with Dravid’s sheet-anchor kind of role when they snapped up Cheteshwar Pujara, who is only 22, but has a similar style of play as that of the former Indian captain.

“I have known Rahul as a little boy and I have a lot of affection for him and the greatest of respect towards his cricketing achievements,” said Mallya before elaborating on the reason for not bidding for him. “After having had an experience of the IPL for three years, we consciously decided we wanted a young team. If you see we probably have the youngest team in the entire IPL. This is one of the inputs given by none other than Anil Kumble, who is now the chief mentor of the team,” explained Mallya.

The business tycoon also revealed that Kumble had taken it upon himself to groom the youngsters. “The fact is that he took it upon himself to say that he would groom these youngsters. I just don’t look at them for 2011, I believe that after that we have an option to retain them for 2013 and that is what trying to build because that ensures consistency,” he added.

Without a captain now, Mallya said he has given the right to Kumble to choose RCB’s next skipper.

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