The Indian Premier League is in Chennai for the penultimate time this season on Friday as the Punjab Kings take on the defending champions Mumbai Indians in a match both will be looking to win to avoid getting cut adrift from the top four.
Neither team have started the season how they would have liked to and another defeat here will have them under pressure as the halfway mark of the regular league phase of the campaign looms in sight.
Punjab Kings
The Punjab Kings won their opening match of the season, although they were literally a few feet from losing that, but in the three matches since then they haven’t really been at the races and that has to be a concern for their fans. In one of the matches their bowling weaknesses were exposed brutally and in the other two their batsmen were so bad teams didn’t even need to take advantage of that soft attack.
The big problem for the Punjab Kings is that they failed to maximise their three matches in Mumbai and now they are at a venue which just does not suit how they want to play. Thankfully for them this is their last match here in Chennai and they then move on to venues which should suit them a lot better. If they can pinch a win here before they get to Ahmedabad and Bangalore their position in the standings would look much better and they could push for a top four spot.
Mumbai Indians
The Mumbai Indians are another team who are playing at a venue which doesn’t suit them. They are 2-2 for their title defence but had it not been for their bowlers and a couple of questionable bits of batting they could easily be 0-4 for the campaign so it is clear that they are nowhere near the level which saw them win the competition quite convincingly in the UAE a few months ago. They will also be delighted that this is their final match in Chennai.
I think the Indians have actually adjusted to the conditions pretty well overall. Their 2-2 record for the season is just a highlight of how badly suited they are to the pitches here rather than an inability to play in them. We’ll see much more of Mumbai later in the season when they get to better pitches so if they can pick up a win here and go into the latter stages of the campaign with a positive record, they would almost be ahead of the expected curve in many ways.
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Key Men
We have seen throughout the season that the best time to bat on these Chennai pitches are against the new ball and in the first 10 overs but with KL Rahul and Chris Gayle liking to start slowly and get themselves in the onus will be on Mayank Agarwal to hit the ground running and get Punjab going else this could be another batting display that falls in a heap.
Jayant Yadav made his seasonal debut in the last match for the Mumbai Indians and contributed down the order with the bat and then bowled some nice overs with the ball. With the West Indian pair for the Punjab being left-handers his off spin could be crucial here, as could any lusty blows at the end of the innings if they are needed.
Betting
I’m going to take a player performance bet here because the bookmakers have finally cottoned on that this is a low scoring ground. I’m still not convinced the under on the lines that are out there fail to land but I don’t really want anything to do with an under where this Punjab Kings bowling attack is involved. Instead I’ll head to the performance markets where the line of Kieron Pollard is one of the lowest I’ve seen for him at 23.5pts and as such I like the over.
Pollard has only got going with the bat once this season and you would be right to suggest that the wicket doesn’t really suit his batting, but some of that is levelled out when we consider that he’ll face the worst death bowling side in the competition, who are so bad at the end of an innings that all too often they take the pitch out of play. Where conditions do suit Pollard is his bowling and it is no surprise he has bowled in the last three matches. This Punjab batting runs out pretty quickly so some late overs from Pollard could snatch a wicket or two. The one area of the game where the pitch doesn’t matter is in the field. Pollard will always field in the key positions so catches aren’t out of the question. I expect him to have a very big game here and certainly one that yields more than 23.5 points.
Tips
Back K.Pollard’s Performance – Over 23.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
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