The Indian Premier League continues on Saturday with another clash in the competition as the Kolkata Knight Riders take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in Abu Dhabi in a battle of two sides who lost their opening match of the season.
That puts a little extra pressure on this one because no team wants to start the season with successive defeats as even though half the league make it through to the play-offs, even this early the best path through the postseason would look unlikely for whoever loses.
Kolkata Knight Riders
It was a bit of a rude awakening for the Kolkata Knight Riders in that opening match and highlighted a lot of the problems that we expected to come along much later in the competition. That it is already an issue is a big concern so they will need to hope that first performance was down to rustiness but when you consider their four overseas players have all been pretty active in recent times, you wonder if it is that or not.
A lot of scrutiny will be on Pat Cummins in this match. When a side spends the sort of money Kolkata Knight Riders spent on him they don’t really have the option of dropping him so unless he gets injured the Knight Riders are going to need to Australian to improve quickly. You would think there would be a natural improvement in their batting as a lot of their batsmen are Indians who have been inactive for a while but if the bowling doesn’t improve the batting might need to perform miraculous tasks.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
The Sunrisers Hyderabad also exposed the concerns over them heading into the season in their first match too. That is the light nature of their batting outside of their opening pair and you would think something will need to be done to address that because they were absolutely cruising to victory against Royal Challengers Bangalore, only to suffer the sort of collapse that you could see coming with such a light batting line up.
That collapse was a shame as they had done some great work to restrict a powerful batting side to a par score but there is just way too much pressure on their openers. The balance of the Sunrisers side isn’t helped by having an overseas captain. It takes away some of their options and I’m sure they would like to get Mohammad Nabi into their side so the injury to Mitchell Marsh might not be as bad as they might have thought as he would be a natural replacement.
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Key Men
If the Kolkata Knight Riders are going to win this match then you’ve got to think Andre Russell will need to fire up either with the bat or the ball. Given that he doesn’t look remotely fit enough to bowl four quality overs they could use him up the order to be more effective with the bat.
Rashid Khan will be saved by the Sunrisers for when Andre Russell comes to the crease. It is well known that the powerful West Indian doesn’t score nearly as quickly against quality leg spin so if the Afghanistan ace can win that duel the Sunrisers will go some way to winning the match.
Betting
I like the Sunrisers Hyderbad here I have to say. I’ve said all along that I have my concerns over the Kolkata Knight Riders and their bowling attack just got took apart in their opening game. Admittedly the Mumbai Indians can do that to any team but assuming it is Mohammad Nabi who comes in for Mitchell Marsh then so can the Sunrisers. That change makes the Sunrisers much stronger with the bat than they were without the Australian in the opener and gives them another dimension to go with when they have the ball in hand.
Kolkata are loaded with left-handed batsmen so having Nabi taking the ball away from their outside edge is a big player in this game. It would also slow down the early flow of runs and put the Sunrisers in a position where they might not need to go hell for leather with the bat, allowing their openers to build a good platform without risking their wickets and potentially exposing any issue the middle order has. Sunrisers match up well to Kolkata and I’ll take them to win this one.
Tips
Back Sunrisers Hyderabad to beat Kolkata Knight Riders for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betfair
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