IPL Stars To Miss World Cup

ndia’s embarrassment of cricketing riches means a number of IPL game-breakers won’t be strutting their stuff in the Caribbean.

Last year, India headed into the ICC World Twenty20 in England as hot favourites. While other countries benefitted from their players’ participation in the IPL, India had surely gained the most advantage from the T20 jamboree. With each IPL side fielding seven local players per match as part of the tournament’s rules, India’s young and upcoming cricketers had earned the ideal opportunity to test their skills against the world’s best.

Sadly for Indian cricket fans, the experience gained from the IPL didn’t translate into tournament success as they failed to make it to the semifinal stage last year.

Again this year the Indian selectors were spoilt for choice when it came to determining the squad for the Caribbean. But have they made the correct decisions?

Here are five on-form IPL cricketers who will be missing out on the ICC World Twenty20 at the end of the month…

Robin Uthappa
Can you believe the Royal Challengers Bangalore batter is only 24 four years of age? He seems to have been around for a lot longer. With the enthusiasm of youth, he has been RCB’s chief bludgeoner at this year’s IPL. If you’ve seen him hit a six, you’ll know that it stays hit. So far he’s notched up 318 runs at a strike-rate of 178.65 and including 24 ‘DLF Maximums’ (aka sixes) – the tournament record so far. He also keeps wicket – making him an almost obvious choice for the squad. Yes? Sadly the answer is no, as the Indian selectors have gone for the Delhi Daredevils’ Dinesh Karthik as second-choice keeper. Karthik is a solid option – but most fans would have loved to see the clean striking of Uthappa at the World Cup.

Murali Vijay
Murali Vijay’s transformation from steady Test batter to explosive T20 hitter sadly came too late to warrant selection for this year’s ICC World Twenty20. But anybody who witnessed his magnificent 56-ball 127 for the Chennai Super Kings against Rajasthan earlier in this year’s IPL would have felt strongly that Vijay has a special talent. The 26-year-old, who like most Indian batters cites Sachin Tendulkar as his hero, blasted 11 sixes and eight fours that day to help Chennai post the biggest-ever IPL total. His batting exploits so far this season have even put the performances of fellow Chennai opener Matthew Hayden in the shade – a true indicator of his fine form. Oh, and don’t call him Murali – like most southern Indians, he only has one name which is Vijay (Murali is his father’s name).

Pragyan Ohja and Amit Mishra
The two leading wicket-takers in this year’s IPL are both spinners and are both Indian. But neither are India’s first nor second-choice tweakers for this year’s ICC World Twenty20 – those titles belongs to Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla. Instead Pragyan Ohja (with 18 wickets for the Deccan Chargers) and Amit Mishra (with 16 wickets for the Delhi Daredevils) will be sitting at home while the Indian team takes to the field on Caribbean wickets that should be fairly conducive to spin. The 23-year-old Ohja has played four T20Is for India, while Mishra has only achieved highest honours in the Test and ODI arenas. Both can certainly count themselves unlucky to lose out to Chawla, whose form so far for the King’s XI Punjab has been solid as opposed to inspirational.

Irfan Pathan
How do you conceivably travel to the game’s premier T20 tournament without an all-rounder of the class of Irfan Pathan? The Man of the Match in the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 Final, Pathan’s back injury woes earlier this season meant he missed out on selection for the World Cup squad. But the 25-year-old veteran of 107 ODIs for India has clearly been fit enough to put in impressive performances for the King’s XI Punjab this year – he’s taken 14 wickets so far in the competition (the most for his team) and scored 231 runs, just four short of teammate Yuvraj Singh, who is in the World Cup squad. With plenty of batting all-rounders in the Indian team (Rohit Sharma, young Ravindra Jadeja, who missed out on the IPL due to contractual controversy, and Yuvraj Singh) India might be missing a beat to have excluded bowling all-rounder Pathan.

Indian to win the Australia brainiest student

Indian origin Australian student Uma has won the Australia's Brainiest Student award. Uma is just 14 years old and studying in Perth University. Australian brain bee conducted this competition for Australian students, this competition included topics like intelligence, sleep, memory, emotions, disease and strokes. More than 4000 students participated for winning this title.

In the final Uma has to compete against other state top performers, the final round had brain testing anatomy exam, doctor-patient diagnosis and neuroscience quiz.

This is the first big title for Uma, she will compete for International Brain Bee competition in California on August this year