Chennai Super Kings will begin their Airtel Champions League campaign against the champions of New Zealand, Central Stags.

As expected the IPL Champions start as the favourites against the team from New Zealand. Stags might not be tough on paper, but as a team, they have proved their worth time and again.

Stags’ side is further depleted when Ross Taylor chose to play for Royal Challengers Bangalore and Jacob Oram injured himself in training, as a result, ruling himself out of the tournament. These setbacks nevertheless, cannot be written off completely. After Trinidad and Tobago’s success last year, we now know that anything can happen in this form of the game. Stags still have players who are capable of turning it around.

On the other hand, with openers like Matthew Hayden and Murali Vijay and middle order led by Suresh Raina followed by Dhoni, Albie Morkel and S Badrinath, Chennai Super Kings look invincible. If that is not enough, what about the spin maestro Muralitharan?

In the bowling department, Central Stags have effective medium pacers in Michael Mason and Seth Rance. The Mason-Rance duo is capable of bringing down the opposition a peg or two.

The spinners did the job for Dhoni in India this year but he will need his pacers to come to the party in South Africa. Super Kings do have the resources but the likes of Balaji, Manpreet Gony and Albie Morkel have to be more disciplined on bouncier tracks.

Many critics have effectively written off the Stags to pull out a shock win against the Super Kings, but, this is Twenty20 and as we have seen in the past, nothing is for certain. At times, it is not about big names, but about big will. We have seen a team like T&T reach the finals of the tournament, which was written off by the critics even before the tournament started. Similar could be the case with the Central Stags. If they manage to turn up as a team and work hard, who knows, they just might get a step further than T&T.

Teams:

Central Stags: Jamie How(c), Bevan Griggs(w), Ben Wheeler, Brad Patton, Brendon Diamanti, Doug Bracewell, George Worker, Kieran Noema-Barnett, Mathew Sinclair, Adam Milne, Michael Mason, Mitchell McClenaghan, Peter Ingram, Seth Rance, Tim Weston

Chennai Super Kings: Murali Vijay, Matthew Hayden, Suresh Raina, Subramaniam Badrinath, MS Dhoni(w/c), Albie Morkel, Srikkanth Anirudha, Ravichandran Ashwin, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Doug Bollinger, Muttiah Muralitharan, Justin Kemp, Shadab Jakati, Michael Hussey, Joginder Sharma