The second Indian Premier League match in the IPL 2021 double header on Tuesday comes from Abu Dhabi as the defending champions Mumbai Indians continue their title defence when they go up against the Punjab Kings.
This is a match which pits two of the sides who are on eight points against each other so one of these teams will enhance their playoff chances while the other will leave themselves with plenty of work to do to extend their season.
Mumbai Indians
This hasn’t been the greatest title defence for the Mumbai Indians. I say that not just because they have lost more matches than they have won but also because their combinations aren’t really working at the minute. Mumbai are a team who work to an overall plan as we know and there isn’t really the room to switch things around. I don’t think they are quite in panic mode yet because they are used to starting slowly but a loss here will have everyone more than a touch concerned.
The big issue for the Indians is the batting. Their big Indian players with the exception of Rohit Sharma aren’t firing like they did last season. That might be a lack of recent activity in which they’ll be fine in time but if it is the difficulty of the pitches then Mumbai have issues. Another concern is the amount of runs Adam Milne has concerned. We haven’t really seen that from him but he might have had one expensive spell too many with Nathan Coulter-Nile around.
Punjab Kings
It hasn’t been a superb season for the Punjab Kings either but they are more a team in transition than the Mumbai Indians so they get a little bit of slack. What they need to go over these last four matches, whether they get into the playoffs or not, is identify players they can move forward with next season because there is no doubt this team are underachieving with the talent that they have at their disposal. They never seem to have a settled side or an obvious plan.
In years gone by the issue has been their bowling attack but actually that has been a much more improved unit this season so the issue has been a lack of being clinical at the back end of their batting innings. A couple of times they haven’t rammed home an advantage but on the flip side of that, when they do get it right they generally look a very good side. One of those times was in the first meeting between these two teams when Punjab won by nine wickets.
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Key Men
After the openers, the only player for Mumbai Indians who looks in any kind of form with the bat is Kieron Pollard but even his impact might lessen the longer the competition goes on and the pitches tire. For now though he is the one who needs to propel the innings in the middle order.
KL Rahul has a ridiculously good record against the Mumbai Indians and if the Punjab Kings are to win this match, or even go close to winning it then you would imagine their captain is going to need to score a mountain of runs.
Betting
There have been a couple of anomalies but in the main batting on this ground hasn’t looked too difficult so far and I expect that trend to continue here with two very exciting batting units. There are one or two players in both sides who haven’t lit the restart of the competition up yet but there is too much class for that to go on forever and when they do hit form it will be by hitting the ball which will see boundaries come regularly.
As it is I think we have a boundary line which is perfectly coverable with just a few players getting going in this match. The line is at 36.5 which has been covered a couple of times here already and which should be covered again here. The pitches have been pretty good in Abu Dhabi so far and we might be beginning to move around the square to bring a shorter boundary into play. Punjab Kings play well against Mumbai and so I’m expecting a fair few boundaries here.
Tips
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