The Indian Premier League continues with one more match in the IPL season on Thursday when the Mumbai Indians look to go top of the table for the first time when they travel to Jaipur to take on the Rajasthan Royals.
This is a much bigger game for the Indians than it is for Rajasthan with the latter needing miracles to be a part of the postseason. All of a sudden, Mumbai have a top two spot in their sights and will be all out to win this one.
Rajasthan Royals
It goes without saying that this hasn’t been the season that the Rajasthan Royals would have been eyeing up at the outset to it. Three wins in 10 matches is a pretty ordinary return for a side who are an established one in the competition now. Injuries have played a large part in their struggles but they should still have delivered a better return than they have done. Getting over the line in tight matches has been a real issue for the Royals this term.
They have lost three close matches this season which had they gone their way they would have been in position to reach the finals. As it is they can only get to 14 points if they win their last four matches and literally every other result would need to go their way for that to be any use to them. The one thing Rajasthan can do with an eye on next season is finish both innings off much more ruthlessly. That will give them a much better chance of picking wins which boost their tally to the levels needed to be competitive.
Mumbai Indians
At the start of the campaign things looked to be heading the same way for the Mumbai Indians as it has the Rajasthan Royals but then we, and more importantly they, remembered that slow starts to a Mumbai season are regular occurrences and that there was no need to panic and now we are seeing why. After one win in their opening five matches, the Indians have now won their last five games and to the naked eye at least look to be getting better with every performance.
Mumbai are a side who can be a daunting one to bowl to when their entire batting unit are firing and having taken a while for it to get into gear, we can now confirm that they are ticking along nicely. It helps that Jasprit Bumrah has returned to fitness and stayed fit. He generally brings any opposing score down by 10 or so runs which takes a little bit of pressure off their batters. A Mumbai side with momentum is a very dangerous one and this version certainly has it right now.
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Key Players
Vaibhav Suryavanshi made a huge name for himself when he clobbered an incredible century at the age of just 14 in the previous Rajasthan Royals match. All eyes will be on the teenager to see whether he can catch fire and go again here.
Jasprit Bumrah might be the man to stop that from happening. He can also be the bowler who denies the Rajasthan Royals the ability to maximise their batting effort in the death overs as well so Mumbai could do with the best from the Indian superstar.
Betting
I find it hard to believe that the Rajasthan Royals can be competitive here unless someone does something incredible such as the century we saw from Vaibhav Suryavanshi last time out. Someone so young is unlikely to offer that again and even if he could he is going to find it hard to do against this Mumbai Indians bowling unit. For me, this one is all about the Mumbai Indians. They just look stronger in every department.
The big concern that I have for the Royals is they just concede too many runs. Had the targets not been reached at the time there is every chance that they could have conceded 180 in eight of their 10 bowling efforts and you are always behind the game when that is the case when you bat well let alone when your middle order is short of runs. If they concede 180 here, and against a Mumbai batting unit that is going through the gears they would be favourites to do that, the Royals are in trouble. Mumbai have restricted their last four opponents to 176 or fewer and three of those matches have been at the Wankhede which is a massively high scoring ground. I expect the Indians to be too good here and I fancy them to cover a 4.5 wicket or 12.5 run handicap.
Tips
Back Mumbai Indians (-4.5 wickets/12.5 runs) to beat Rajasthan Royals for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
