As with previous seasons when Sunday comes along we have a double header day of action in the Indian Premier League and the first of the two matches on Sunday comes from Hyderabad as the defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad continue their title defence when they host the Gujarat Lions.
It wasn’t the start the Lions were looking for in their first match when they got a bit of a towelling by the Kolkata Knight Riders on Friday whereas the Sunrisers won in the season opener and can steal an early march with another win here.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
Even though they beat the Royal Challengers Bangalore in their first match I think it is still fair to say that the defending champions weren’t at their best in that game. They won’t mind that though. If you can win in this competition when you don’t play at your best and you know what you need to improve on that is often a good thing.
The Sunrisers will need to work on their bowling. They weren’t bad in the opening match but they were a little loose at times and in key matches that could count against them but we shouldn’t expect any side to be absolutely perfect in their first match when the players only play together for six months of the year.
Gujarat Lions
The Gujarat Lions got it all wrong in their opening match. They might never admit to it but for me they picked completely the wrong team stacking their batting line up with overseas players but there was no balance to their batting line up and little or no quality in their bowling attack and they were punished accordingly.
If the Lions are to do anything in this campaign they are going to have to find some sort of a bowling attack or win a lot of tosses because the bowlers they fielded in the first match never once looked good enough. If their gun batting line up fires then they can score anything but it is folly to rely on that.
Team News
With Mustafizur Rahman not yet available it would be a surprise if there was much change in the Sunrisers Hyderabad side. They’ve had long enough since their first match for any strains to ease.
Gujarat Lions have to change the make up of their side I would imagine. One of Dwayne Smith or Jason Roy is going to have to come out of the side with someone like a James Faulkner or a Andrew Tye coming in.
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Betting
All things being equal you would probably fancy the Sunrisers Hyderabad to come through this match but the Gujarat Lions have a batting line up which can put any side to the sword so there isn’t a huge amount of value in taking the champions in this one. I would imagine whoever bats second would have every chance here and we don’t know who that will be until the toss.
All of that leads me to the side markets and in what I expect to be a high scoring match I am going to go with the boundaries where I think a line of 39.5 is a bit on the low side. I say that because both sides have powerful batting right the way down their order and while the Sunrisers have a decent enough attack it is going to feel the pressure on the Gujarat batting line up. I fancy 40 boundaries here especially when the first game here contained 49.
Tips
Back Over 39.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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