The IPL is here and the Kolkata Knight Riders have smashed the Bangalore Royal Challengers to smithreens - not much of a challenge given that the Black and Gold turned the challengers black and blue... What fireworks for the opening, showcase game from Kolkata - Shahrukh khan must be proud. In the end Kolkata scored 223/3 and Bangalore started poorly, falling behind by 140 runs.

Brendan McCullum, what an innings! I saw the brief highlights at this link on Youtube... as the commentators are very right in saying that his whole innings looks like a highlights reel while others fell around him.



In terms of the match itself, it did live up to the excitement - we got a record total score in 20/20 and a record individual score as well of 158 not out from McCullum. In fact he ended up carrying the bat. This is a good example of good captaincy and great use of the resources at hand by Kolkata.

Sam, one of our regular visitors has left some good analysis in the form of comments... once again great comments. here is what he had to say:

SRK’s Kolkata Knight Riders have defeated Malia’s Royal Challengers by 140 runs,it was expected that the KKR’s will prevail over RC’s but nobody predicted or expected such a rout, Brendon Mccullum decimated the RC attack by a highly entertaining knock of 158 off just 73 balls,it was said by many pundits that Vijay Mallya has paid too much to Kallis and Zaheer, his batting line up is not suitable for a T20 match even the batting order was not right,in my opinion Boucher or Cameroon White should have opened with Jaffer, their batting will get a boost when Misbah will join them and their bowling line up will cetainly get boosted when Steyn,Bracken and Abdur Razzazk will join them, but lack of fire power in their batting lineup will still remain a major concern for them.

Kolkata is well balanced but if they don’t get Shoaib it might hurt them in the long run

Did you watch the game and are you planning on watching the upcoming ones? Who are you supporting? Please weight in with your comments

Andrew Symonds and Yuvraj Singh joined Dhoni and Sachin in the millionnaires club as Symonds was picked up by Hyderabad for $1.35 million. Big bucks being thrown around here. Looks like Symmos spat with Bhajji and the whole racism row didn't have much of an impact on his value. Symonds joins team mate Adam Gilchrist in the Hyderabad Team. Deccan Chronicle have now spent over $2 million on the two Australians.