Jaipur, Apr 14 : As the countdown for the 2008 Indian Premier League (IPL) continues, the Rajasthan Royals team's gearing up for its first match against the Delhi Daredevils team on Saturday.

The team played a practice match on Monday morning here to allow its captain and coach Shane Warne, to assess the team's performance.

The players of the team were more than excited to get trained by Shane Warne.

"This is a warm up match. Shane Warne wants to assess the performance of the players of the team. A lot of junior players are in the team who have not played with him or even played international matches. Shane Warne wants to see who is capable of doing what," said Ananth Vyas, Media Co-ordinator, Rajasthan Royals team.

Apart from Shane Warne, the players of the team include Mohammed Kaif, Yusuf Pathan, Niraj Patel, Siddharth Trivedi, Ravindra Jadeja, Swapnil Asnodkar, Taruwar Kohli, Jaydev Shah, Sumeet Khatri, Parag More, Mahesh Rawat, Pankaj Singh and Dinesh Salunkhe.

The IPL is scheduled to kick-off on April 18 and will be played over 44 days involving 59 matches, including two semi-finals and the final at Mumbai on June 1.

ANI