KTK gear up for IPL debut

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The Tuskers make their IPL debut on April 9 and a couple of domestic players in the squad conceded they will have to do a bit of friendly infighting to ensure a permanent place in the playing XI.

Wicket-keeper batsman Sushant Marathe, who was part of the Mumbai Indians squad in IPL-3 is up against some quality domestic talent within KTK.

“To be frank, all of us have to work real hard for our place in the probable list. The domestic players are really good,” said the hard-hitting southpaw who needs to hone his batting skills as there are three other wicket-keeper batsmen, including Brendon McCullum, Parthiv Patel and Chandan Madan.

All-rounder Balachandra Akhil who was hand-picked from the Royal Challengers Bangalore has tough competition from Kerala captain Raiphi Vincent Gomez, Ravindra Jadeja and Yashpal Singh.

“The strength of RCB was its domestic players, including Vinay Kumar and Manish Pandey. If KTK works out a similar strategy, we can be successful,” said Akhil.

Vinay Kumar, who had a successful IPL-3 with RCB finds the new team a more enterprising league of cricketers. “I am here as a bowler but, I will be looking forward to improve as an all-rounder” said Vinay.

There are three Indian medium pacers in KTK — Vinay, Sreesanth and R.P. Singh.

Services player Yashpal Singh said the team is patching up real good. “We have a handful of hard-hitters in the squad and the experience of Aussies Hodge and Klinger is going to help the team,” said Yashpal.

When the Tuskers enter the gridiron for their maiden IPL endeavour with RCB, watch out for Kedar Jadhav, Deepak Chougule, Kerala spinner P. Prashanth, Tanmay Srivastava, Gnaneswara Rao and of course Ramesh Powar.