Brendon McCullum’s Kolkata Knight Riders will face up to the Sachin Tendulkar-led Mumbai Indians in the second match of Monday. Kolkata have now played four matches and have won only one of them, with two losses and one rained off, where as Mumbai have three points from three games.
On paper, Kolkata (6/5 at Sky Bet to win match) has a strong enough batting line-up, and a bowling line-up to envy. Still it is difficult to call them favourites, going into this match. The reason has been to do with the past results in the tournament, brought about mainly due to a captain who looks very out of place. McCullum’s appointment as the skipper came amidst much media glare, and it is very apparent that it has affected his batting too. Ladbrokes offers 7/2 for him being the highest scorer of the Kolkata innings.
One isn’t yet sure about Chris Gayle’s (3/1 at Ladbrokes) injury that he had sustained in the ‘tied’ match against the Royals, but given his batting skills and the position that the Knight Riders find themselves in, he will bat even if it were to be on one leg. However, it is the batting of former Indian captain, Sourav Ganguly (5/1 at Ladbrokes) that will be dissected the most by his opponents. He almost one-handedly pulled off a miraculous win before going down to the super-over. The one batsman who hasn’t yet fired in the tournament is Brad Hodge (5/1 at Boyle Sport to be highest Kolkata scorer), and there is a reasonable chance that he is benched for the game. However, if he does get another match this time around, it could just be a do-or-die situation for him; something that will want to make of.
The bowling will be in the hands of Ajantha Mendis (4/1 at Stan James to be most economic bowler) and Ishant Sharma(9/2 at Stan James to be most economic bowler), but the back-up bowling of Ashok Dinda, Ajit Agarkar and the rest needs to play reasonable supportive role if Kolkata needs to notch up a win.
Mumbai has had an up and down sort of a start. They won a match, and then had a match washed off ensuring a week’s off before going down to the red-hot Deccan Chargers. Tendulkar’s reluctance at the strategic-breaks was evident by the way his team crumbled like a cookie after the ten-over mark, but he had shown that by then, that he can easily bat through the inning and get to a really high score. William Hill offers 11/4 for Tendulkar being the top Mumbai batsman.
J.P Duminy (9/2 at Sky Bet for being top Mumbai batsman) showed signs of getting used to the awe of playing next to Tendulkar for a whopping sum of $950,000, and could be the man to watch out for. Dwayne Bravo and Abhishek Nayar prop up the Mumbai middle-order and these all-rounders are one of the reasons why they will go into the match as favourites (8/11 at Stan James to win match).
The bowling was supposed to be led by Zaheer Khan, but his form has looked a tad scratchy. Instead, Harbhajan Singh (4/1 at Stan James) looks certain to be the most economic bowler amongst the battery.
Tips:
Team: Mumbai Indians
Top Mumbai batsman: Sanath Jayasuriya
Top Kolkata batsman: Chris Gayle
Economic bowler: Ajantha Mendis
