Two more sides resume their season in the Indian Premier League on Monday when the Kolkata Knight Riders take on the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the latest contest in this heavily delayed IPL campaign.
The Knight Riders probably needed the break to come along because they were going nowhere fast before the stoppage. The Royal Challengers will be cursing their luck but they can take comfort from the fact they made the play-offs when the IPL was in the UAE last season.
Kolkata Knight Riders
You don’t usually get a chance to reset completely in these franchise tournaments so the Kolkata Knight Riders will be eager to make the full use of the opportunity that they have been given. They probably weren’t helped by conditions in the first part of the season. We have to remember that this is a squad built on a relatively small ground on a pitch where the ball comes onto the bat but with home advantage taken away this season they didn’t get those conditions too often.
Even without optimum conditions, the Knight Riders will be disappointed to have only won two of their opening seven matches this season. That has left them with a lot to do in the second part of the campaign if they are going to be a factor when the postseason comes around next month. The good thing for the Knight Riders is they have a couple of players who came back to form in the Caribbean Premier League and that might be significant.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
The Royal Challengers Bangalore picked up pretty much where they left off last season which makes me think they are a better side when they are not playing at the Chinnaswamy, which ever since the IPL was formed they have always struggled to defend scores at. They seem to perform better when there is a little give in the conditions that bring their bowlers into play. A good reason for that is because they are usually very strong with the bat.
The success or otherwise of the Bangalore outfit is nearly always down to their bowlers but you just wonder if they will be at their best with the bat here. AB de Villiers won’t have played much, if at all, since the IPL stopped first time round and Glenn Maxwell won’t have played too much recently either. This Abu Dhabi pitch isn’t always the most conducive to batting so it will be interesting to see how the Royal Challengers go about their business here.
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Key Men
Sunil Narine hit form at the Caribbean Premier League with some cameos with the bat, but perhaps more importantly for the Knight Riders some excellent bowling efforts. If he can bowl four tight overs here it might open the game up for Kolkata.
A lot of attention will be on Virat Kohli for the first week of the resumption after he has announced he is stepping down from his T20 captaincy duties later in the year. He didn’t have a great Test series in England so needs to find form quickly.
Betting
The first match between these two was a high scoring affair in Chennai where the conditions are never the best for batting. That makes me think we might see a higher scoring match here than we did in the resumption of the tournament on Sunday. I sort of pre-empted that because there were a lot of players in that match who hadn’t been active recently and the pitch in Dubai is always tough to score on. That isn’t so much the case here.
There are one or two players who haven’t played for a little while but in the main the batsmen have been active and this Abu Dhabi track usually plays pretty well first up. It might get harder to bat on as we go along but in the main it starts out pretty well and for all we’ve got some good bowlers on show here, they might need a match to make the adjustment in conditions. The run line for this one is 316.5 which might be an overreaction to the Sunday game. There were 370 runs in their first meeting this season and I think the over will cover here too.
Tips
Back Over 316.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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