The Indian Premier League is back in Bangalore on Tuesday afternoon when the two biggest franchises in the competition go head to head as the Royal Challengers Bangalore host the defending champions Mumbai Indians in a massive match for both teams.
After seven matches these two have laboured to two wins apiece and so they need to hit the afterburners from here on in. It might be that neither can afford another loss if they are to make the top four but they certainly won’t make it with more than one more defeat. A win here is vital to both.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
You would have to suggest that for the second season in a row the Royal Challengers Bangalore have got major issues. It is quite clear that loading up their side with world class batsmen is not doing anything for them and it will be interesting to see if they address that ahead of next season. They need better bowling resources.
The problem they have is that they actually brought an international bowler into their ranks for their last match against the Kolkata Knight Riders but it made no difference. They were soundly beaten again and you get the feeling that try as they might they will never be able to defend a score with any comfort.
Mumbai Indians
After a dreadful start to the season, the Mumbai Indians rung the changes last time out and picked up a second success which has offered up hope that they might be doing their regular thing of tanking home in the second half of the campaign to make the top four. I wouldn’t want to write them off doing that but I’d need to see them back up a performance with another before I’m convinced.
It was interesting to see Mahela Jayawardena ring the changes. It takes a big and brave man to drop Kieron Pollard in this format of the game but it showed that form is everything. Whether dropping Pollard had an effect on the win remains to be seen because he wouldn’t have batted anyway but their batting line up, which has struggled this season, looked so much stronger.
Team News
AB de Villiers missed the previous match for the Royal Challengers Bangalore with a viral infection. If he has recovered from that he will be straight back in. It could be time for Chris Woakes to return if Colin de Grandhomme isn’t going to bowl.
Mumbai Indians may well decide to go in unchanged after such a convincing win over the Chennai Super Kings last time out. That means that the move to leave Kieron Pollard out for Ben Cutting could remain.
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Betting
There is a lot of money coming for the Mumbai Indians in this match and while I think they are the better side there is no way I could back a side with confidence without knowing whether they are batting second here or not. We’ve seen all season just how tough this ground is to defend.
I hit the crossbar with sixes here in the previous match when the rain stalled Kolkata’s innings but I’m going to chance it again here for the same reasons. If anything Mumbai are a more natural big hitting side than Kolkata while we’ve seen all tournament that there are not enough runs for Bangalore to defend so they need to pile up a score. McCullum or de Villiers, de Kock, Kohli, de Grandhomme, Lewis, Sharma, Cutting, Duminy and Pandya all smack it a mile so over 15.5 sixes looks the way forward here.
Tips
Back Over 15.5 sixes for a 4/10 stake at 1.95 with BetVictor
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