The final stage of the Indian Premier League gets underway on Tuesday when the competition finally leaves Mumbai for the first time this term as the Gujarat Titans take on the Rajasthan Royals in the Qualifier 1 at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
These two teams finished one and two in the league standings and their reward for that is two bites at the cherry to make the final. The winner here will move straight through to Sunday’s finale while the loser will get another go on Friday.
Gujarat Titans
The Gujarat Titans had booked top spot in the table from quite a way out and have had to play out the season knowing for that period of time that this match is on the horizon. To their credit, although they lost their last match against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, they won the two before that so they didn’t limp into the postseason like some teams have done. They are in decent enough form so now it comes down to whether they are good enough on the day.
The Titans have probably ridden the quality of their bowling attack for much of the season with a couple of batters getting them over the line in impossible situations on the times that their bowlers have let them down. The one issue I would have with Gujarat is that they don’t hit many sixes as a rule and on a pretty small Eden Gardens ground you would think the winning team will be the one who clears the ropes the most.
Rajasthan Royals
The Rajasthan Royals were always looking good for the top four this season and by virtue of winning their last regular phase game they were actually good enough to finish second and put themselves in a great position of paying the ultimate tribute to Shane Warne by winning the title. I highlighted that as a motivation for them at the beginning of the season and nothing I’ve seen at any stage has told me I was wrong on that score. A win here would improve their chances as they would be fresh on Sunday.
The Royals have won three of their last four matches with their batters scoring regular if not spectacular scores in that time and their bowlers restricting the opponents to mid-range scores which have eased the pressure on their batters. They now have to go out and replicate that once more and you would think they would be in a good position to make the final at the first time of asking.
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Key Players
Hardik Pandya seems to be the catalyst for this Gujarat Titans side. If he bats well the whole team plays well but if he gets out early or gets stuck with the bat in hand they end up in awkward situations. To be fair they’ve rectified most of them but under a different pressure they won’t want to be in that position.
Jos Buttler is still the man in the Rajasthan Royals team that strikes fear into the opposition. They know if he is still batting into over 12 and beyond that they are up against it. On this ground Buttler could do some real damage if he gets going.
Betting
I think the runs line is a little on the low side at 314.5 for this match. There are plenty of reasons why I say that. The first is that when these two met at the DY Patil Stadium where the wicket probably had the most in it, 192/4 played 155/9 so that was a pretty high scoring match. Another reason is that this is a very high scoring ground and with this being the first match of the tournament to be played here and a high profile one at that it would be right to expect the pitch to be good for batting.
There are plenty of big hitters in these two teams but also players who the rest can bat around so I’m expecting a fairly high scoring game, not that we necessarily need one of them for this line to be covered. There isn’t a knockout pressure to this match either which is another positive so I would be surprised if both teams don’t challenge the 160 mark here and if they do both reach that then this line gets covered easily. Alternatively, if one gets up towards 190 like in their regular league meeting then we’ll only need just over a run a ball in the second innings. However it plays out I think we’ll see this line covered.
Tips
Back Over 314.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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