BANGALORE: All is set for the third edition of the Champions League T20 to get under way at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday night.
Never mind if the injury-hit Mumbai Indians no longer look like a Mumbai or Indian outfit, so what if defending champions Chennai Super Kings have a very tired (mentally and physically ) captain leading them out on Saturday a day after Royal Challengers Bangalore field at home at least three foreign players who haven't played a game of cricket for months. This is the World Cup of club cricket and nothing can take that fact away.
With a prize money of $6 million, among the players at least this has become the tournament to qualify for. You could see that in Hyderabad on Wednesday when you could not make out which team had won or lost. For both Somerset and the Kolkata Knight Riders, the entry into the main tournament was what needed to be celebrated.
Talk to players from the teams that have landed in India from around the cricketing world and you will know that the CLT20 has become a must-be-there event in their calendar.
The tournament as such is an open affair, the star value in the IPL teams (there are four of them around this time) being somewhat negated by the extra cohesiveness in the other outfits who play together more often. Any of the ten teams who'll be on view is capable of bagging the trophy and the $2.5 million that will come with it.
For the teams from Australia and South Africa, both the advantage and disadvantage could be that they are coming out of a long break even as the lone English team that has qualified, Somerset, will hope to ride on the match practice obtained in their just-concluded first-class season.
The qualifying stage too could turn out to be beneficial for them as they would have some idea on the tracks on offer, though Bangalore and Chennai could well turn out be very different from Hyderabad.
If at all one team stars favourite it has to be CSK, who despite the trauma that skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been through in recent months, have possibly the best all-round side and one that is currently free of injuries.
How different from Mumbai Indians who will be without the iconic Sachin Tendulkar as also the likes of Rohit Sharma, Munaf Patel, etc. Even the woes of the Indian team that was plagued by injuries right through the tour of England, pales in front of MI's plight.
They have thus been allowed to play a fifth overseas player in the playing eleven, a ruling that is bound to create its own controversy.
Then again, controversies are now par for the course.
