The Indian Premier League season will conclude from a competitive standpoint for one side on Tuesday when the last week of the regular IPL 2024 campaign continues for the Delhi Capitals and the Lucknow Super Giants.
These two teams are two points outside the top four and so they have to win and hope results go their way if they are to extend their campaign. The likelihood is that this is a bigger game for the Super Giants who have two games left, whereas this is the final match for Delhi.
Delhi Capitals
The Delhi Capitals have been much better this season than in the last two but they still aren’t quite where they need to be in order to push for the title and although they can mathematically still get into the top four here, they need to win by such a margin and need so many results to go their way over the last week that it really isn’t going to happen. They have the firepower to score big runs but the margin they need just isn’t possible without help from other sides when it comes to bridging the net run rate gap.
There has been a bit of a changing of the guard for the Delhi Capitals this season. Jake Fraser-McGurk has come through to be the replacement for David Warner moving forward and the likes of Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shaw, Tristan Stubbs and Axar Patel offer a solid core of cricketers they can move forward with. They will need to sort out their bowling unit if they are going to challenge for this title in the coming campaigns but at least one half of the side looks to be sorted.
Lucknow Super Giants
The Lucknow Super Giants have had an up and down season themselves but with two matches left there is still a better than fair chance that they will extend their campaign if they can win both of them. There is a chance that they might need to win at least one of them very big in order to stay alive but they can cross that bridge when they come to it. They have to win the game first and after losing their last one by 10 wickets in no time at all that means that a huge improvement is needed.
The Lucknow bowling has struggled for the majority of the campaign. When they have won matches it has largely been down to their batters and when they have gone well they have usually got over the line. When they haven’t put up the sort of scores needed they have been heavily punished so there will be a lot of emphasis on their batting to deliver the goods and then they just need to hope their bowlers can deliver the goods.
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Key Players
Jake Fraser-McGurk is the man who could light up this match. He hit 55 from 35 in the reverse meeting between these two teams and over the course of the season he is striking at a pretty ridiculous 237.41 over 139 balls. If he catches fire Delhi could end their season with a win.
KL Rahul is once again the leading run scorer for the Lucknow Super Giants this season but he has only made one 50 in his last five innings. Now would be a really good time for the classy opener to add another to his collection.
Betting
We are at the stage of the season where over the course of proceedings I expect the scoring to drop a little with so much on the line but I’m not sure this match is going to follow suit. I say that because winning isn’t the only requirement here but whoever wins probably has to win big so runs are going to be needed in large supply. It just so happens that both teams are much stronger with the bat than they are the ball which helps.
The other thing which helps the run scoring in this match is the fact that every match in Delhi has been high scoring so far this season. We have had four matches on this ground so far this term and the lowest score in the eight innings has been 199. In terms of lowest scoring matches 422 is the lowest amount so the 387.5 run line for this one already feels quite low. Add in that Lucknow would have conceded over 200 in four of their last five matches had targets not been reached and that Delhi would have conceded over 185 in their last six but for run chases being completed we have even more ammunition for a high scoring game.
Tips
Back Over 387.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
