The last team to get their Indian Premier League campaign underway does so on Wednesday when the IPL heads back to Alu Dhabi for the decent looking clash between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Mumbai Indians.
Kolkata get their competition underway in this match and they will be looking to put more misery into the defending champions who lost their opening game and would be under a little bit of early pressure should they fail to win here.
Kolkata Knight Riders
We said at the beginning of this competition that there will be teams who picked up an advantage from the IPL leaving India and those who lose a lot. As the competition goes on you would think the Knight Riders fall into the latter category because their side is built on power with the bat and the ball where they would look to dominate teams at Eden Gardens in particular. That element should be fine while the pitches are relatively fresh but they are going to tire pretty quickly.
You would think the strength of the Kolkata outfit will be their batting this term. They have arguably the most powerful batting line up in the competition with some fearsome hitters of a cricket ball in Tom Banton, Eoin Morgan, Andre Russell and Sunil Narine all in their ranks. They have a couple of excellent spinners as well but they will need their skilled seam bowlers to deliver the goods because they are going to be important later in the event.
Mumbai Indians
It wasn’t the worst performance in the world from the Mumbai Indians in the opening match of the tournament but it is fair to say there is room for an awful lot of improvement at the same time. They looked a rusty team and that is completely understandable given how little cricket has been played worldwide in the last six months or so. Their fielding effort was very ordinary and there were batsmen who clearly needed time in the middle.
Those issues will naturally sort themselves out but the one thing which might not is just how light their batting looks in terms of out and out batsmen. If we call Kieron Pollard a genuine batsman he bats at five and after that all there is to come is bits and pieces all-rounders. I’m not so sure that will get very far in this competition so there is a lot of pressure on that top five to deliver the goods. A real quality mystery spinner would be nice too.
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Key Men
Sunil Narine will be a key man for the Kolkata Knight Riders here. With the batting that is to follow him he will be given free rein to play his shots and then his four overs with the ball can strangle that Mumbai middle order and force the all-rounders to do what they aren’t capable of.
The one way of containing this Kolkata Knight Riders batting power is to take early wickets so that there is no platform for the big hitters in the middle and lower order to take advantage of. With that in mind, Trent Boult’s opening burst could be vital.
Betting
At this stage of the competition I’m after specialists and balanced teams to get the job done and that is the Kolkata Knight Riders here. Mumbai Indians are likely to be improved from what we saw from them on Saturday but the make up of their side worried me going into the tournament and I haven’t really deviated from that opinion. I think they are a batter light and I’m not completely enamoured by their bowling attack outside of Bumrah and Boult.
The down side on Kolkata would be that they haven’t played a match in the tournament yet but the advantage is they’ve had enough time to assess conditions and formulate game plans to bring out their strengths, of which there are many. When you weigh it up, Kolkata look a much stronger side with the bat and I think they have more match winners with the ball so to get such a combination at odds against seems good to me even taking the dew issues into account.
Tips
Back Kolkata Knight Riders to beat Mumbai Indians for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Coral
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