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When the team was first picked, everyone derided the Royal Challengers Bangalore as a 'Test' team, that would never do well in a slam-bang format. A second-from-bottom finish during the first year seemed to confirm their worst fears. The team was owned by Vijay Mallya - who has a lot of qualities, but who isn't best known for his ability to deal with failure, and who has an ego that would struggle to fit into the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Something had to give. Either a spectacular turn-around was called for, or Mallya's cricketing adventure was going to be written off as a bad investment which would hurt everybody associated with it. The turn-around was duly achieved, but nobody could have predicted just how spectacular it was to be. And as it is with most things in life, fortune favoured Bangalore, and then they found the right men to take advantage of the luck they had.

Much like it had happened with the Indian Test team, Rahul Dravid was replaced as captain by Anil Kumble. Again, mirroring the Test team saga, Kumble was not the original choice, but a sort of fall-back option. And of course, being the man that he is, Kumble ensured that just as he had taken India giant strides forward in the Test arena, he took Bangalore forwards in the Twenty20 arena.

The result is that Bangalore enter the third IPL as among the more favoured teams, after being rank underdogs in the first two editions. Last time around, Anil Kumble was comfortably the bowler of the tournament, carrying the Bangalore attack on his shoulders, while veterans such as Kallis and Dravid pulled their weight admirably. Bangalore were also well served by the explosive Ross Taylor. Youngsters Virat Kohli and Manish Pandey showed promising sparks, but the majority of the work of taking the team to the finals was done by the veterans.

This time, the veterans are still looking capable enough to pull their weight, while the youngsters have progressed by leaps and bounds. Virat Kohli is now an established international batsman, Manish Pandey is one of the most exciting and talked about players in the domestic circuit and is knocking on the doors of international selection, and Abhimanyu Mithun has been a good find. Amongst the foreign players, Cameron White has come into his own spectacularly, while Eoin Morgan has undoubtedly been the steal of the third auction at just USD 220,000.

With amongst the best cores of Indian players, Bangalore are well placed to mount a strong challenge once again. They were hurt in the past by the inability of all the Indian players to contribute meaningfully, but their bowling looks good with Praveen Kumar, Mithun and Vinay Kumar alongwith the evergreen Kumble, while the batting too has teeth in the form of Dravid, Kohli, Pandey and Uthappa. To top it all they have an enviable list of foreign players that are likely to be available throughout the tournament in Cameron White, Eoin Morgan, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher, Dale Steyn and Roelof van der Merwe.

Their one area of concern might be the form of star buy Kevin Pietersen, who seems a shadow of his former self after his surgery. Since his comeback to international cricket in November, Pietersen has averaged a miserable 15.50 at a strike rate of 67.88 in ODIs and a not-too-much-better 25.28 in Test matches at the time of writing. Not once has he shown the world-dominating batsmanship he is capable of, and Bangalore might have to do the unthinkable and not pick him in the playing eleven even when he is available.

In Ray Jennings, they have a tough no-nonsense coach, who will not be afraid to take hard decisions, so one can expect even senior players to not be picked if he feels that they won't serve the team combination best. The good news for Bangalore is that Rahul Dravid is back to his fluent best, and as he showed in the previous two editions of the IPL, those who write him off as 'unfit' for this format, do so at their own risk.

A likely eleven for Bangalore will leave fans of the Royal Challengers salivating at the strength of the team. Picture this line-up: Jacques Kallis, Manish Pandey, Virat Kohli, Rahul Dravid, Cameron White, Eoin Morgan, Robin Uthappa, Praveen Kumar, Dale Steyn, Anil Kumble, Vinay Kumar/Abhimanyu Mithun.

The only possible change to the team that could be made for the better might be when Ross Taylor becomes available to play. He could well replace Jacques Kallis or Dale Steyn. And when your foreign strength is such that players of the quality of Mark Boucher and Steyn/Kallis get left on the bench, it is good news indeed. Bangalore, thus, look a good bet to make the semi-finals again this year.

Bangalore's Key Player Timelines:

Players	Available from	No. of matches they will play
Kevin Pietersen	25th March	9 (will miss 5)
Ross Taylor	1st April	7 (will miss 7)