The Indian Premier League continues on Friday when the Kolkata Knight Riders take on the Punjab Kings at the Wankhede Stadium in a match which might very well be significant for the season of both of the teams.
Both have a win to their name already this term but Kolkata have played a match more than the Kings and they have lost that game. They will be looking to get back on track here while the Kings will be looking to maintain their perfect start.
Kolkata Knight Riders
We have seen a very good Kolkata Knight Riders performance this season and a pretty indifferent one. The problem they have is that the good one hasn’t exactly seen its form franked because the team they beat, the Chennai Super Kings, lost their next match so it might just be that they beat a weak side. That means we might well find out a lot about the Knight Riders here and we need to because they didn’t pull up many trees in the Indian leg of the IPL last season.
The Knight Riders lacked someone with the brains to just calm things down in the defeat to the Royal Challengers Bangalore last time out. To be fair Andre Russell tried to play sensibly but got outfoxed. The others got out to the spin far too easily and they will need to be more sensible here, without going into their shell with the bat if that is possible. To be fair they showed in the loss to Bangalore that with just a par total on the board they can still be a handful for other teams.
Punjab Kings
It was the Royal Challengers Bangalore that the Punjab Kings beat so if they want the confidence of a direct form line then they most certainly have it. After copping a bit of a pasting with the ball they delivered a wonderful run chase. If you was going to be stupidly critical then you could argue that a lot of players got themselves in with starts in that chase and none of them took it through to the end but they chased down 206 with an over to spare so you are splitting hairs to pull them up on that.
A bigger concern would be that once again their bowling went the distance at the end of the innings. This isn’t a new phenomenon with the Punjab Kings, or the Kings XI Punjab prior to this reincarnation in front of us, but we do have to cut them a little bit of slack given the amounts of dew that have been coming down and affecting the competition. Even so if they could tighten up a bit at the death we have seen they can score big runs, with the potential for more to come.
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Key Players
Sunil Narine has bowled eight overs and taking 1-27 in this tournament so far. Kolkata matches haven’t the high scoring ones that others have been but that is still a ridiculous two sets of bowling. Throw in his potential to crash it to all parts with the bat and he very much remains a key player for the Knight Riders.
If someone is going to sort out this death bowling problem that Punjab have then Kagiso Rabada will be the man. He is available for this match having had to sit out the first game while quarantining and he’ll be assigned the task of finishing the innings off better with the ball.
Betting
Matches involving the Kolkata Knight Riders haven’t really caught fire yet and certainly haven’t contained many sixes but I’ve got to think that is just an anomaly rather than any sort of norm we are going to see. This is a team who had Andre Russell down at eight and Tim Southee at nine in their last match so they certainly aren’t short of batting so I expect that trend to be righted soon and I think it comes here. I say that for a couple of reasons.
The overriding one is that the Punjab Kings bowling continues to go around the park but they also have incredible depth in their batting unit and on this relatively small Wankhede ground where the ball is coming onto the bat so nicely it can only be a matter of time before the Knight Riders hitters start launching balls out of the park. Even if they don’t here the sixes line is only 13.5 and the Kings are certainly capable of knocking off a sizable percentage of that total. I’ve got to think the over is a good thing here.
Tips
Back Over 13.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with BetVictor
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