Bangalore Royal Challengers

Bangalore Royal Challengers is the team that is going to represent the city of Bangalore in the Indian Premier League, the inaugural Twenty20 cricket tournament to be held in India. The team is owned by the liquor magnate Vijay Mallya, the chairman of UB Group. He named the team after his liquor brand, the Royal Challenge.Charu Sharma is the CEO of the team and Rahul Dravid is the Icon Player. Martin Crowe, the former New Zealand captain, has also been signed-in as a member of the management team.

Franchise history

Indian Premier League is a cricket tournament being organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI - the governing body for cricket in India), and backed by the International Cricket Council.In the inaugural tournament to be held in Apr-Jun 2008, BCCI has finalised a list of 8 teams who will be participating in the tournament. The teams will represent 8 different cities of India, including Bangalore, and were put up on auction in Mumbai on 20 February 2008 and the Bangalore team was won by Vijay Mallya, who paid US$111.6 million for it. This was the second highest bid for a team in IPL, next only to Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries' bid of $111.9 million for the Mumbai team.

Etymology

Vijay Mallya wanted to associate one of his top-selling liquor brands, No. 1 McDowell's or Royal Challenge with the team. He chose Royal Challenge and named the team as Bangalore Royal Challengers.

Players

The players in the team (except for Rahul Dravid, who was the Icon Player), were selected in an auction conducted by BCCI on 20 February 2008. South Africa's Jacques Kallis at $900,000 became the costliest player to be selected to play for the Royal Challengers. This meant that Rahul Dravid , being the icon player would be paid $1,035,000 (15% more than the highest bid player in the team). Other players selected included the Indian Test cricket captain Anil Kumble along with his team-mates Wasim Jaffer and Zaheer Khan, West Indian Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Aussies' Nathan Bracken and Cameron White, South Africa's Mark Boucher (Wicket Keeper) and Dale Steyn.

Current Squad

1	Rahul Dravid (Captain)	35																					Icon Player
2	Jacques Kallis	32																					US$ 900,000
3	Anil Kumble	37																					US$ 500,000
4	Cameron White	24																					US$ 500,000
5	Zaheer Khan	29																					US$ 450,000
6	Mark Boucher	31																					US$ 450,000
7	Nathan Bracken	30																					US$ 325,000
8	Dale Steyn	24																					US$ 325,000
9	Shivnarine Chanderpaul	33																					US$ 200,000
10	Wasim Jaffer	30																					US$ 150,000
11	Praveen Kumar	21																					Under 22 Player[6]
12	Saurabh Tiwary	18																					Under 22 Player