Wednesday’s first match sees Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders play each other in the 19th match of the DLF IPL.
Bangalore is currently the bottom-placed team with only two points from five matches where as Kolkata have won one and have had one game abandoned to be placed last but one in the standings.
The Royal Challengers won their first game of the tournament to raise their fans’ hopes but not much has changed after that. The change in captaincy is clearly not working, and with Rahul Dravid back home to be with his new-born child, the batting looks further weakened. Kevin Pietersen (4/1 at Stan James to be the top Bangalore batsman) was supposed to change Bangalore’s struggling fortunes with his flamboyant batting but so far, it has brought him the highest score of 37 only. Jacques Kallis (4/1 at Stan James to be highest scorer for Bangalore) has a 62 to his name, but hasn’t exactly set the stands on fire in the rest.
For me, the player who looks like he can try and resurrect the situation for the Royal Challengers is Jesse Ryder (7/2 at Stan James), who had got a couple of ducks in the first two, but returned to smash a quick-fire 32. One hopes that coach Ray Jennings feels the same and gets Ryder in for the next match.
For the Knight Riders, the situation isn’t too dissimilar. The top order has just failed to fire except on the odd occasion, and this has led to extra pressure on the bowling. Still they go into the match as favourites – 5/6 at Stan James to beat Royal Challengers who go into match 6/5 at Sky Bet – and that is to do with the likes of Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum and Sourav Ganguly. Brad Hodge was sent up the order in their match against Mumbai and got a start but then the pressure of scoring runs at a quick rate got to him.
One could see a change in the top-order of the Kolkata team; Morne van Vyk could be worth a try at the top of order in place of Hodge, while another spinner in Murali Kartik may also get a look-in. Kartik is a surprise exclusion for all matches so far; especially after having seen that the pitches do support the slow bowlers and Kartik’s a specialist T20 bowler at the English county circuit. For me though, Ishant Sharma (9/2 at Stan James) will be the favourite to bowl the most economic spell of the match.
Amongst the Bangalore bowlers, Praveen Kumar had been replaced by Pankaj Singh, and he did a fair job at that, but Dale Steyn needs to be back for the Royal Challengers to have any chance of registering a win. Stan James offers 4/1 for Steyn to be the most economic bowler, and if I had to put my money, it will be on this South African speedster.
Tips:
Team – Kolkata Knight Riders (5/6 Stan James)
Top Bangalore batsman – Jesse Ryder (7/2 Stan James)
Top Kolkata batsman – Brendon McCullum (11/4 Stan James)
Most economic bowler – Ishant Sharma (9/2 Stan James)
