IPL 2017: From Supergiants to Supergiant, Pune’s new good luck charm

Rising Pune Supergiant have tinkered with their name ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2017.

Apart from getting the right mix of players for a better performance than their last outing in the Indian Premier League, Rising Pune Supergiant have also tinkered with their team name for the upcoming tenth edition of the cash-rich T20 competition.

Rising Pune Supergiant have dropped the ‘s’ at the end of their name for IPL 2017.(PTI)

The Pune-based franchise has decided to call itself ‘Supergiant’ and not ‘Supergiants’ in this season. The reason for dropping the ‘s’ from Supergiant, however, has nothing to do with any superstitious belief.

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“There is no superstition behind calling ourselves Supergiant now,” the team’s spokesperson told HT.

“Last year when he called ourselves Supergiants, we were looking at four to five players in the squad who had supergiant abilities. While we were preparing for this IPL, we thought why just a few players, the entire team is supergiant. So, that is why we decided to go with Supergiant this time,” the spokesperson added.

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Last month, the Pune franchise decided to replace India’s legendary skipper MS Dhoni with Australia’s Steven Smith to lead the team in IPL-10.

Under MS Dhoni’s leadership last year, which was also their debut IPL season, the team finished seventh just below table laggards Kings XI Punjab. Out of 14 IPL games, Pune won five and lost nine matches.