The Indian Premier League offering on Monday could be one of the matches of the tournament as the Royal Challengers Bangalore look to kick their campaign into life when they take on the stuttering former champion Kolkata Knight Riders.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
After a powerful start to the season the pre-season favourites have slumped. They have just one win in their last five matches and with teams starting to get away from them they need to get winning soon to get back among the playoff mix.
Bangalore have addressed their bowling situation by signing up Chris Jordan but with Chris Gayle back now the Royal Challengers always have the issue of balance and it will be interesting to see how the line up in this one.
Kolkata Knight Riders
Things are just in danger of going the opposite way for the Knight Riders. Having won four of their first five matches they are now without a win in two and need to get back to winning ways to maintain their lofty position in the league table.
Their issue in recent matches has been their bowling attack which is starting to get carted around the park and that isn’t the sort of thing you need when facing up to one of the most powerful batting line ups assembled in a tournament of this kind.
Team news
Chris Jordan has arrived in India but whether he will play remains to be seen. Chris Gayle is ready to return to the side and you would think one of them will replace Kane Richardson at the very least.
Kolkata remain without Manish Pandey so they need to find a fixed man to bat at number three. Jason Holder and Brad Hogg offered little in Delhi so they could be replaced. Shakib would be an obvious replacement for one to add to their batting depth.
Form
Royal Challengers Bangalore: WLLWLL
Kolkata Knight Riders: WLWWWLL
M Chinnaswamy Stadium
As ever the Bangalore ground has been the highest scoring in the competition with three scores over 190 in the three matches here including the largest total of the season so far when Bangalore made 227/4 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
We all know what to expect on this ground. It is tiny, the wicket is good for batting so the runs are highly likely to flow again unless the bowlers can do something out of the extraordinary.
Betting
As ever I can’t really bet on the match outcome here given how hard the ground is to defend. I’ve a feeling that Bangalore will be a little harder to beat if Chris Jordan plays but I’m not sure how he and Gayle get in the same line up so that has to be a bit of an issue.
Instead I’ll head for the obvious side markets which are the sixes and the boundaries and I’ll go with the total boundaries in this match because Bangalore don’t seem to be hitting as many sixes as in previous seasons.
The line is 47.5 which sounds far too high but two of the three matches on this ground this season have seen boundaries soar over the 50 mark and I’m expecting these two batting line ups to deliver something similar here.
Just a quick check of the personnel likely to be on show and we have Gayle, Kohli, de Villiers, Watson, Gambhir, Uthappa, Russell, Pathan and Yadav all smashing boundaries for us. I’d be slightly more concerned if Kolkata’s attack was performing how it should but it isn’t and as such I expect the boundaries to flow here.
Tips
Back Over 47.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
Back them here:
We think this will be a high scoring game so you could have a bet with Paddy Power who offer MONEY BACK if your teams scores 170 runs+ but LOSES
Bet here with Paddy Power:
