The Indian Premier League continues with another match on Saturday as the IPL 2024 campaign rolls into Lucknow for the first time this season for the clash between the Lucknow Super Giants and the Punjab Kings.
Lucknow were pretty well beaten in their opening match of the tournament and this is their first chance to put things right. Punjab won their first game but lost the second one and will be keen to get back to winning ways here.
Lucknow Super Giants
The Lucknow Super Giants came up very short against the Rajasthan Royals in their opening game last weekend. The good news is that they have had six days to sit down and work out where they went wrong and put plans in place to ensure that doesn’t happen again. The bad news is that they are on home soil where last year the wickets didn’t really help their batters and it will be interesting to see if either the pitches have got better or their batters can adapt.
Lucknow lost their match against Rajasthan in the final five overs with the ball in hand and the first five overs of their batting innings. They conceded 43 runs in the last 21 balls that they bowled and were 11-3 after 3.1 overs with the ball. They tried their best to recover from the wreckage but even the best of Nicholas Pooran, who was forced down the order with the fall of wickets, couldn’t get them home. They will be looking to tidy up both facets of their game.
Punjab Kings
The Punjab Kings were easy winners of their opening game although quite what they beat in the Delhi Capitals remains to be seen. It looked like they were going to follow that up with another win against the Royal Challengers Bangalore but they couldn’t quite hold things together at the end of their bowling innings. That was a surprise because they actually have one of the better death bowling combinations in the tournament on paper.
That is the second time they have let a side try to wriggle away from them at the end of the innings so it might be that Punjab are a better side when they are chasing but there is no way they can guarantee doing that, so they are either going to need to take more wickets with the new ball or hold their nerve better at the end of the innings. They do have power with the bat so putting big totals up isn’t beyond them but they don’t want to be in a position where their batters are under pressure to go over par.
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Key Players
KL Rahul showed his class in the defeat to the Rajasthan Royals. While wickets were falling all around him he was able to dig in and get himself in and then ended up posting 58 from 44 balls which was a good effort in the situation. He’ll hope that is the launchpad for a big season.
Jonny Bairstow hasn’t got going in the tournament yet. He was run out at the non-strikers end in the first game and out cheaply in the second one. If he can fire like we know that he can then he’ll give the Punjab Kings bowlers more runs to play with, which could be needed.
Betting
I’m not keen on too much in this match because I am interested in whether the pitches in Lucknow are going to play better this season than they did in the last one. If they do then Lucknow could have a very good season but they could struggle if not because they are a team whose batters will want the ball to come onto the bat but until we know for sure it is hard to know how to approach matches in this part of the world.
There is one bet that I like though and that is the 17/2 on Nicholas Pooran to top score for the home side. That looks a massive price when he scored 45 off 18 balls the last time these two sides met and he top scored for Lucknow in their defeat to Rajasthan in their opening game. Pooran came into the tournament in decent form having finished second in the run charts in the ILT20 tournament and that might be significant if the pitch doesn’t play great. He has the power to take the pitch out of the equation and with only Kyle Mayers, who didn’t play the opening game, and Marcus Stoinis, who batted below Pooran in it, scoring more runs for the Super Giants than the West Indian, I think the 17/2 is too big here.
Tips
Back N.Pooran Top Lucknow Super Giants Batter for a 1/10 stake at 9.50 with Betway
