The Indian Premier League heads back to Ahmedabad on Friday for what is a key clash for the Gujarat Titans when they host the IPL 2025 pre-tournament favourites Sunrisers Hyderabad in what should be an entertaining clash.
The Titans have slipped down to fourth in the table but they have played fewer matches than everyone else around them. Sunrisers know that they have to win out from here to stand any chance of the finals so there is plenty on this one.
Gujarat Titans
The Gujarat Titans have probably been the best team in the competition so far even though the league table might not paint that picture. They have six wins and three defeats on their record but one of those losses was in their last match when they were shocked by the Rajasthan Royals. Prior to that, they had been in excellent form with six wins in seven matches and in the main those wins have been pretty convincing ones as well.
The Titans can certainly lay claim to having the most useful top four in the competition. There isn’t a top four in the tournament who are scoring runs combined to the levels that the Titans are. The surprise this season is the amount of runs that they have conceded and you would imagine when we get to the push comes to shove part of the season they will need to tighten up in that regard but if and when they do that they will be a huge danger to winning the tournament.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
We have officially reached do or die time for the Sunrisers Hyderabad. They have won just three of their nine matches so far and with the amount of teams already on 13 and 14 points with matches to play it is looking less and less likely that 14 points will get into the latter stages of the season, more so with the negative run rate that the men in orange have, so if they want to have a shot at the trophy they are going to have to win their last five matches.
To their credit, they come into this one off the back of a convincing win over the Chennai Super Kings where for the first time this season their bowlers got the job done and took some pressure off of a batting unit which still isn’t catching fire to the levels that they did last term over a consistent period. Individuals have dug out special innings on occasion but they have only put up two scores over 200 all campaign and when so much resource has gone into their batting unit they needed a much better return than that.
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Key Players
Sai Sudharsan has moved into second place in the overall run scorers in the competition now and he looks like he is in the sort of form to go big against a bowling unit which has struggled to build pressure and maintain consistency throughout the tournament.
Kamindu Mendis has been in an out of this Sunrisers Hyderabad side throughout the course of the campaign but when he has featured he has generally made an impact and he could be the player to fill the out of form slot at number four here.
Betting
I’ve been searching all over for ways that I can’t see a high scoring match here and I haven’t been able to come up with anything. This is a high scoring ground which is a good early starting point. There have been four matches here this season with three of the first innings being 200 or more and the other one was 196 so you have to think that given there hasn’t been a match on this ground for 13 days that the pitch will be fresh and the high scoring will continue.
Then it becomes about how the best way to play that is here. The run line is certainly tempting in the 360 range but that doesn’t really allow for a big first innings and a second innings collapse. I’ve decided to go with over 48.5 boundaries here. Travis Head has a phenomenal record on this ground so you can see him going off on one while Gujarat should feast on this Sunrisers bowling unit. If Sunrisers are chasing and going well you can see them going hard throughout because their run rate is a point negative to them so boundaries should flow on a small ground and a usually lightning outfield.
Tips
Back Over 48.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
