The second Saturday of the Indian Premier League season sees another double header of action taking place and it begins at the DY Patil Stadium where the Mumbai Indians meet the Rajasthan Royals in a good looking game.
These two suffered very different fates in their opening match with the Indians well beaten as they tend to be in the early stages of the competition while the Royals blitzed the Sunrisers and can set the early pace with a win here.
Mumbai Indians
Shock horror Mumbai Indians lost their opening game of the season. It happens so often that it is hardly worth criticising them for but once again they are going to need to use their powers of recovery from the earliest possible stage of the season. The concern for them would be that they coughed up a winning position in that opening match. That is very much unlike them as they are usually ruthless in positive situations but to be fair the partnership that beat them was quality.
It goes without saying that they will need to tighten up at the death moving forward in the season. That is where the biggest surprise came from because after adding Tymal Mills to the mix with Jasprit Bumrah they hold claims for the best death pairing in the competition. The other thing they will need to do is fire throughout the batting innings. We have seen in this tournament that you have to go big or go home.
Rajasthan Royals
The Rajasthan Royals certainly had no issues in doing that in their opening match. They posted more than 200 with the bat and were never in any danger whatsoever of defending it. The concern with the win of the Royals in that opening match was that it was only against the Sunrisers Hyderabad who have been a fading force for the last season or two and who don’t immediately look to have improved much ahead of this one.
You can only beat what is in front of you though and Rajasthan did that ruthlessly. I suggested going into the season that the Royals could be runners for the title this season with the work they have done to their bowling unit and it was very much a positive that all their key bowlers hit the ground running. It helped that they put 200 on the board but I would still back them to deliver even without that weight of runs behind them. The key for Rajasthan now is to deliver those level of performances throughout the campaign.
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Key Players
Ishan Kishan is becoming a serious run machine for the Mumbai Indians. He has scored 50s in his last four IPL knocks and if he can make it five then with the speed he scores his runs at he will lead Mumbai to a decent total.
The Mumbai middle order all prefer pace on the ball so holding Yuzvendra Chahal could be a good play. He has a good record against Kieron Pollard but the likes of Tim David and Daniel Sams aren’t guaranteed to get him out of the park either. His four overs could be crucial.
Betting
I feel like I should bet on the outcome of this match because these day games are the ones we can do that on without being too worried about the dew coming into play but I’m not sure who I fancy to win this one. I really do like Rajasthan Royals this season but how can you go against a side with the batting that Mumbai Indians have, not to mention the quality they have with the ball. I’ll leave the match betting alone and head to the side markets where the boundaries jump out at me.
The line for this one is up at 42.5 which you would think is a high line but I’m not so sure it is. These are two powerful sides with the bat with Mumbai almost a who’s who of batting while Rajasthan were sending Ravi Ashwin in at eight in their previous match and might be forced to strengthen their batting with Jimmy Neesham replacing Nathan Coulter-Nile. The last match here saw 128 play 132/7 but there was still 34 boundaries in that match. I expect this to be a lot more high scoring and as such we should get the extra nine boundaries needed here.
Tips
Back Over 42.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
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