The Indian Premier League rolls into Sharjah for the first time this season on Tuesday when the Rajasthan Royals become the latest team to get their campaign up and running when they take on the Chennai Super Kings.
This will be the second time we will have seen the Super Kings this term and they will be looking for successive wins having seen off the Mumbai Indians in the season opener. Victory for them will have them as the early pacesetters in the fledgling table.
Rajasthan Royals
You get the feeling this is a big season for the Rajasthan Royals. They won the first Indian Premier League but have underachieved since then but with a wealth of talent in their overseas ranks this season they will be expected to put up a much better showing than we have seen from them recently. In order for that to happen they will need to ensure they get their personnel right, something I remain convinced is harder to do with an overseas captain.
One problem the Royals have had in recent times is getting the depth of their batting right and that isn’t going to be easy here with Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes missing. One thing that does look to be guaranteed though is that they will be good with the ball. They have a bowling attack that will be led by Jofra Archer but Jaydev Unadkat and Shreyas Gopal should be very handy in these conditions, which should take some of the pressure off the batting.
Chennai Super Kings
It looked a little bit ropey to begin with in their run chase but in the end everything worked out well for an experienced Chennai Super Kings side in their opening match of the tournament. In the end they chased down a decent enough score with plenty in hand against the Mumbai Indians to get their season up and running, and they will carry plenty of confidence into this one with them, especially when the likes of Shane Watson and Murali Vijay missed out with the bat in that game.
One area of concern might be how a couple of their bowlers were expensive in that first match but it is so hard to be too harsh on these players because the majority of them having been on a cricket field in six months. The one good thing for the Super Kings is that they have a wealth of bowling talent on the sideline waiting to get in so if their bowlers do have another bad outing they have replacements ready.
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Key Men
Jofra Archer can lay claims to being the best white ball bowler in the world right now and the Rajasthan Royals could really do with him showing the world why here as if they are going to win this match they will need early wickets you would think.
Ambati Rayudu announced himself to the tournament with a brilliant innings in the opening match. It might be hard for players to find form as this competition goes along with pitches getting tired quite quickly so the Super Kings will look to him to go again.
Betting
We are in Sharjah for this match where the boundaries are the smallest in this part of the world and with that in mind I think we’ll see over 38.5 boundaries here. Chennai Super Kings hit 21 boundaries in their win over the Mumbai Indians in a middle of the road score where they had barely scored a run in the first five overs so there is a lot more to come from them in the boundary department especially factoring in the smaller boundaries here.
Rajasthan have plenty of decent batsmen in their ranks as well and I expect Smith to be pretty aggressive as a captain so they might leak a few more boundaries than usual in the hunt for wickets. We’ve seen the pitches at the first two grounds look pretty good for batting and given how much cricket is going to be played here over the next couple of months I don’t expect this one to be any different. 38.5 boundaries is perfectly achievable here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 38.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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