IPL 2019: Michael Vaughan picks the favourites to win the title

The Indian Premier League (IPL) will kick off on March 23 with a game between the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Like every year, all the eight teams have rejigged their side a bit and are looking equally strong on the paper. The prediction game has started amongst the former cricketers ahead of the season and the former England cricketer Michael Vaughan has also joined the list.

He has backed Royal Challengers Bangalore to lift their maiden IPL title this year. The franchise is one of the only three teams along with Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Capitals to have never won the competition in its first eleven seasons. Right from the inaugural edition, the Bangalore-based outfit has boasted one of the strongest teams on the paper but they somehow manage to find a way to fail.

Last year, they were one of the favourites to lift the title. However, just like the previous seasons, they failed to live up to the expectations once again. Despite having the likes of AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli, Brendon McCullum and Quinton de Kock in their ranks, they failed to do live up to the expectations.

Virat Kohli & Co. are now bracing up for another season as they look to win their first-ever IPL title. After the poor display of the middle-order last year, they have roped in the likes of Shimron Hetmyer, Marcus Stoinis, Shivam Dube and Heinrich Klaasen to bolster the middle-order. At the top, the onus is on Kohli and de Villiers to set the platform.

The Royal Challengers are looking strong on paper once again and Vaughan feels this could be their season. The Ashes-winning skipper took to Twitter to make his prediction while also expressing his excitement over working for the IPL.

“IPL soon … @RCBTweets to win it this year me thinks … Looking forward to working with @cricbuzz again … #India #Mumbai,” he wrote..

IPL soon … @RCBTweets to win it this year me thinks … Looking forward to working with @cricbuzz again … #India #Mumbai

— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) March 19, 2019

Failures down to bad decisions

Ahead of the 12th edition of the competition, captain Kohli, who is leading the RCB from 2013, refused to blame luck for the team’s overall poor performance and said that making bad decisions at the crucial time were responsible for it.

“The failure lies where decisions aren’t made properly,” Kohli said last week. “If I sit here and say our luck was bad, that won’t be right. You make your own luck, and if you make poor decisions and the other team makes good ones, you will lose. When we played big matches too, our decision-making wasn’t right.”

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