There are six matches remaining in the regular season of the Indian Premier League with the Tuesday match being do or die for the IPL 2021 campaign of the Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians when they meet in Sharjah.
The knockout stages of the competition do not officially begin until next week but only the winner of this match will remain in the hunt for the one remaining playoff place so in terms of their season this is effectively a knockout match.
Rajasthan Royals
After following up a win on their return to action this season with three successive defeats, the Rajasthan Royals kept their season alive with a wonderful win against the Chennai Super Kings at the weekend and they now know that if they win this match they will face a knockout clash with the Kolkata Knight Riders in their final game of the regular season. If they lose here they will go into that match knowing qualification is out of their hands barring a ridiculous margin of victory in that game.
There appeared to be a clear change in intent of the Royals in that win over the Super Kings. They went after the bowling rather than wait until it was too late and if they can adopt that tactic here it might give them every chance of getting the victory which keeps their season alive. The one thing they are definitely going to need to do is get it right at the back end of their bowling innings. If you get it wrong against the Indians you can easily go the distance which isn’t good.
Mumbai Indians
We are so used to seeing the Mumbai Indians peaking at this stage of a season so the fact that they have only won one of their five matches in this leg of the season is very much a surprise. I think most people were happy enough to give them the benefit of the doubt for a couple of matches because they are always terrible starters but I think most would have expected them to have caught fire by now. That hasn’t been the case and unless they do it now their season is done.
The real surprise is that it is their batting that has really struggled. You can accept that their bowlers need a couple of matches to get up to speed but they have had five matches now and only once has their batting put up a score over 150. Even in the match they won they weren’t going to get to 150 so this is a team who really need their international class batting unit to stand up and be counted. The other issue the Indians have is even if they win both their matches it still won’t be enough if the margin of victory isn’t huge.
Special Offer
Sign up for a Boylesports account to get up to £25 in free bets! Perfect offer for this tournament! Click the image below for this great offer! New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Aware.
Key Men
The Rajasthan Royals were crying out for someone to support Sanju Samson with the bat and Shivam Dube did just that in the previous match. If he can let his blade flow again in this match then he could propel the Royals up to a perfectly challenging score.
This is a new ball pitch in Sharjah so the Mumbai Indians really need Rohit Sharma to come to the party in this match. He is the player who can bat through the innings and score big and his team need that side of him now.
Betting
I think we’ll see a few runs in this match. I thought the pitch in the last match in Sharjah was a pretty decent one and at some point this Mumbai Indians batting has to fire and it might be that a do or die situation is what fires it into life. The other thing which might suit it is the fact that this is a softer Rajasthan Royals bowling attack than ones they could have faced and have faced in the past, especially at the death where it can all come unstuck for the Royals.
Rajasthan look like they have adopted a go after the bowling sort of approach and they now have a top four who have runs and confidence under their belt so they might catch the Mumbai Indians a little cold here. Mumbai have been good with the ball this season but one or two bowlers have got away from them and on this small ground that might be exacerbated here. The run line for this one is 288.5 runs which was safely covered in the previous match on this ground and can be passed once again.
Tips
Back Over 288.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021
