The Indian Premier League heads to Bangalore for the first time in the IPL 2024 season on Monday as the Royal Challengers Bangalore look to kick their new campaign into life when they welcome the Punjab Kings to the Chinnaswamy.
Bangalore were beaten in their opening match by the Chennai Super Kings while the Punjab Kings were winners against the Delhi Capitals. You get the feeling home games are going to be key this term so Bangalore will be eager to get their first win here.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
The Royal Challengers were pretty comfortably beaten by the Chennai Super Kings in their opening match where many of the issues they had last season presented themselves again. They had actually got off to a decent start but when one wicket went three went in quick succession and they had to waste some overs rebuilding the innings. That was a feature last term where nobody outside the top three scored enough runs and it is something they need to put a stop to as quickly as possible.
The other issue they have is the lack of a genuine quality spinner and that might be even more apparent here than it was in Chennai because if you don’t get deep into a batting line up with wickets in the middle order on this ground you are opening yourself up to carnage at the back end of proceedings. The positive was that a couple of finishers presented themselves in the opening game and they will be needed more and more, especially here at the Chinnaswamy.
Punjab Kings
The Punjab Kings went into the season as the outsiders of the lot to win the title. I never saw it that way and we saw glimpses of why I thought the Kings might make a mockery of the bookmaker predictions. They might only have beaten the Delhi Capitals, second outsiders in the outright market, but it was the way in which they won the game, and had they not delivered an indifferent final over with the ball, the margin of victory would have been even more comfortable.
Where I was impressed with the Kings in that match was that they didn’t panic in the run chase. They will have known that they had to get off to a winning start at home against supposedly weaker opposition and so it would have been easy to panic when they lost a couple of wickets in the fourth over. They didn’t panic though and rebuilt the innings and won well. If they can just ensure dodgy overs at the death are few and far between the Punjab Kings look to have a nice balance about them and could surprise again.
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Key Players
Glenn Maxwell was out first ball against the Chennai Super Kings and that certainly isn’t a great start to the season. Royal Challengers Bangalore seriously need their gun middle order batter to start firing else this campaign will go the same way as the previous one.
Sam Curran only bowled one over in the first match against the Delhi Capitals but he showed his worth by managing the innings with the bat at number four. His depth bowling might be used more in this game and he feels like a key player.
Betting
In a normal world where this match was played on a normal sized ground I would have no hesitation in backing the Punjab Kings to get the job done here. I really like where they are going whereas Bangalore look like a work in progress to me. The issue with backing the Kings is that this isn’t a ground which you want to be backing a team to defend on and for all Bangalore look like they will build their way into the campaign, they have a couple of players who if on this ground they come off can win any game on their own.
That all makes me look elsewhere and it is to the sixes where I am heading. We all know this is a tiny ground, there is no point in me continually going on about it but there are some huge hitters of a cricket ball on show here. We have Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green and Dinesh Karthik on one side and on the other there is Jonny Bairstow, Jitesh Sharma, Sam Curran and Liam Livingstone among others. There isn’t a great deal of mystery in either bowling unit so I expect the runs to flow and enough of them to come in sixes to cover a 15.5 line.
Tips
Back Over 15.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
