The Indian Premier League moves back to Eden Gardens on Wednesday with the home straight in the IPL 2025 season continuing for the defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders and the Chennai Super Kings.
The Knight Riders are in the last chance saloon in terms of their chances of reaching the finals so this is a huge match for them whereas the Super Kings are just playing out the season and will be looking to be major spoilers at a party.
Kolkata Knight Riders
With five wins, five defeats and a washout which might have been a blessing in disguise, the Kolkata Knight Riders have run out of room for another defeat if they want to make the postseason. With a loss here they would only be able to reach 15 points and with three teams on that total or better after the Tuesday match, it is unlikely to be enough to get them into the postseason. They have to be looking at winning their last three matches and even then they might need some help from others.
To be fair to Kolkata, they have won their last two matches so they are beginning to build some momentum. In those two outings, they have put up over 200 with the bat and are beginning to look like a daunting unit to bat against once again. We saw last season the damage that batting unit can do when it is flowing and generally when the batters are confident it takes the pressure off the bowlers and they provide their best too.
Chennai Super Kings
This campaign has been a write off from a pretty early stage for the Chennai Super Kings and really all they are playing for now is to avoid the embarrassment of collecting the wooden spoon. They are going to need to double their two wins from their 11 matches so far in their final three games if they are to avoid finishing bottom and based on what we’ve seen so far you would say that looks an unlikely prospect barring a huge change.
The hopes of the season went west when Ruturaj Gaikwad got injured. He was the man in the top three who could accelerate the scoring with the class to go big in doing so and once he went down it just took too long for Chennai to find the personnel to adopt a modern approach. Chennai also haven’t really gone particularly well with the ball this season and ultimately a squad which looked too old on paper has delivered on that billing.
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Key Players
We finally saw the pyrotechnics that Andre Russell can provide in the previous match for the Kolkata Knight Riders. They will be hoping that the all-rounder can go big again if called upon but also that he can offer something with the ball too.
Ravindra Jadeja showed all of his class in almost getting the Chennai Super Kings home in the last match when he clobbered 77 from just 45 balls and he went for under nine an over for his three overs too which wasn’t too shabby when Chennai conceded 10.65 an over overall.
Betting
I like the sixes in this match. This is a must-win match for the Kolkata Knight Riders and with the amount of spinners in the Chennai Super Kings ranks and the quality of them the last thing Kolkata need here is a turning pitch to assist those bowlers so I would imagine we are going to see this match being played on a wicket which comes onto the bat and doesn’t offer much assistance for any of the bowlers and the Knight Riders to believe they can win a shootout.
They should be favoured to do that but then of course we have the toss to take into account with this ground being hard to defend when the pitch is so good so rather than get involved in the match betting, over 17.5 sixes looks the way to go here. The lowest score in the last five first innings here has been 198/3 so the pitches are playing well. 24 sixes were hit in the last match here while Punjab Kings had put 11 on the board when the rain came an over into the Kolkata run chase in the match prior to that. There were 25 sixes in an earlier match on this ground and with Chennai now able to bat with freedom I’m expecting both sides to contribute to a total of 18 or more here.
Tips
Back Over 17.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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