It is the final day of the regular season in the Indian Premier League on Sunday and in the first of the two matches the equation for the defending champions Mumbai Indians is pretty simple. They must beat the Delhi Daredevils at the Feroz Shah Kotla or else their title defence is over.
It is pretty simple for the home side too in fairness. Whether they win, lose or smuggle a draw somehow their campaign ends immediately after this match as they are no longer in contention to qualify.
Delhi Daredevils
It has largely been a season to forget for the Delhi Daredevils but they did enjoy one bright spot last time out when they took care of the Chennai Super Kings in what was probably their best bowling performance of the season. That has been their issue throughout the campaign as they have had few woes with the bat in hand.
Although they are not playing for anything here I’m sure the Daredevils will want to go out with a win. If they were to finish the campaign with successive wins it would give them some belief ahead of next season and actually reassure them that they don’t need to do a huge amount between now and then to be a competitive force.
Mumbai Indians
All the pressure is on the Mumbai Indians in this match. They have to win to have any chance of making it through and although a win would most likely send them into the playoffs in fourth spot they could still be usurped by the Kings XI Punjab although that does seem extremely unlikely. Therefore this is effectively the start of what the Indians will hope are four knockout matches in eight days.
There is no doubt that the reason for the turnaround in the fortunes of the Mumbai Indians has been their bowling attack. When these two met in Mumbai much earlier in the campaign there appeared to be no plan and in truth no real discipline to the Indians but there is much more of both now and it is good to see.
Team News
Delhi Daredevils look likely to stick with the same formula which won for them last time out. Glenn Maxwell isn’t in great form so he could be vulnerable but I would imagine Ponting won’t want to change too much.
There is no reason why the Mumbai Indians would make many changes either although if Ben Cutting is only really batting then they might get better resources out of someone else at number eight.
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Betting
Mumbai Indians are priced up as part of the must win and therefore are a lot shorter than they should be policy that seems to be in operation at this stage of seasons and I can’t really back them at the price. They are slightly more reliable than the Royal Challengers Bangalore but we saw what happened to them from a similar position on Saturday.
Instead I’ll head to the side markets where I like the boundaries bet. The pitch here on Friday played very slow and kept a bit low and I would imagine it will have been hard to jump start it into life in little over 36hrs since that match. When you think this is a day game too I wouldn’t be surprised if the wicket is a bit on the dry and hard to bat side of things. Mumbai only have to win the match so if they are chasing I’d imagine they’ll sacrifice flashy for run accumulation so a 43.5 boundaries line looks a tough on the high side. There were only 32 boundaries here on Friday. I don’t see 44 here.
Tips
WON – Back Under 43.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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