Chennai Super Kings - King of Kings

Airtel Champions League has come to an end with a wonderful closing ceremony. This huge tournament starts on 10^th Sep 2010 and lasted for 17days with huge crowd, fun and entertainment. It has been a great show in terms of boundaries, wickets, thrills and of course super over too. The champion teams from India, South Africa, Australia, West Indies and New Zealand with a total of 10teams had played and finally Chennai Super Kings sealed the Champions League Twenty20 winners with their eight-wicket victory over Warriors in the grand finale in Johannesburg. It is the first team from India to bag this title.

In the most expected final match, Warriors won the toss and had got off to a violent start with bat. It was a reverse sweep by Davy Jacobs that changed the entire complexion of the game. After his wicket, the game came into the Chennai’s control with tremendous bowling performance from R Ashwin, Muttiah Muralitharan and L Balaji. They restricted the Warriors to 128, which was never going to be tough to chase. M Vijay and Michael Hussey played both pace and spin very well providing a steady and solid start with assured knocks shutting warriors out of the contest. When Vijay and Suresh Raina fell in quick succession, Dhoni did his job well. CSK were richer by USD 2.5 millions for winning the second edition of the tournament, their second crown in five months after their IPL triumph in April. Warriors received USD 1.3 million for finishing runners-up. It was a real emotional moment as this was their last match playing as a unit as they may lose some players in the auctions. Dhoni thanked the whole crowd, their coach Stephen Fleming, Hayden, Muralitharan and Hussey for constantly helping the youngsters.

 Murali Vijay is the Man of the Match for scoring 58 runs off 53 balls. Ravichandran Ashwin is the Man of the Series for taking 13 wickets in the competition. Vijay wins the golden bat for becoming the highest run scorer in the competition. Ashwin wins the Golden wickets for being the highest wicket taker in the competition. The Super Kings are now the Emperors of the T20 world. This tournament has produced some entertaining cricket, Chennai were clinical right throughout and it's been a joy covering this.

$4 million prize money for Champions Trophy

The prize money for the Champions Trophy has increased nearly four times, with US$4 million on offer for the tournament to be played from September 22 to October 5 in South Africa. The format has also been revamped, with only eight instead of ten teams participating. Centurion and Wanderers will host all 15 games between them.

The teams have been divided into two groups of four each and the top two from each will qualify for the semi-finals. India and Pakistan find themselves in the same group, along with Australia and West Indies. Group B includes South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. The hosts will play Sri Lanka in the opening game in Centurion.

Haroon Lorgat, the chief executive of the ICC, said the significant increase in prize money was just the first in a series of innovations that the ICC would announce in the run-up to the Champions Trophy. He added, "We are extremely grateful to South Africa for stepping in to host the event after it was postponed last year because of security concerns in the original host country, Pakistan, and we are also grateful to our members for finding a slot for it in what is a busy year for the global game."

Dravid among Champions Trophy probables

Its happy to hear that Rahul Dravid is included among India's probables for the ICC Champions Trophy in September this year. The selectors picked a longlist of 30 players for the tournament, to be held in South Africa, including Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan. Dravid played his last ODI in October 2007 against Australia in Nagpur. He averages 39.49 with 10,585 runs from 333 games with a strike-rate of 71.22 and is the third Indian to accumulate more than 10,000 runs in ODIs. Dravid played a key role in the success of Royal Challengers Bangalore during the IPL's second season, scoring 271 runs at a strike-rate of 115.81 as the team finished runners-up in the tournament held in South Africa.

Probables: MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Abhishek Nayar, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh, Praveen Kumar, Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik, Munaf Patel, R Ashwin, M Vijay, Amit Mishra, Ajinkya Rahane, Dhawal Kulkarni, S Badrinath, Ashish Nehra, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar Singh, Wriddhiman Saha, Pankaj Singh.