The Rajasthan Royals will take on the Kochi Tuskers Kerala in the 28th game of the Indian Premier League at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur.
The Royals have not had the best of times recently, but the results aside, it is a travel that would have got to the team. They have featured in four matches in the last seven days and what would have rubbed the salts into their wounds is that they have won neither.
Rajasthan v Kochi odds:
The Rajasthan Royals (6/5 at
BetFred) had started the tournament with a couple of wins in the first week of the tournament and their last four games have gone without a win. What will hurt the side more is that in none of those games have they even come close to winning them. Kochi’s (8/11 at
Blue Square) fortunes have gone in the other direction.
They lost their first couple and chasing 189, it looked like they were going down against the Mumbai Indians in their third one. They chased it down and then beat Chennai and Kolkata in the following matches to sit pretty with three wins now.
Ground and Pitch:
The Sawai Man Singh pitch will have something in it for the spin bowlers; much more than some of the others in the IPL. However, this is a night game and dew could be an issue.
Player News:
The Royals had gone into the previous game with four changes to their line-up. Rahul Dravid (7/2 at
Blue Square) had made a comeback into the playing eleven, but their new number-three Johan Botha (7/1 at
Paddy Power) did not seem to have recovered enough. However, the buzz is that he should be fit to get back to the playing eleven.
What the captain Shane Warne needs to do is to get Shane Watson (3/1 at
Boylesports) to open the innings; he has been shuffled around in different positions for the different games and that may be affecting his batting. The other guy who needs to find his form and quickly is Ross Taylor (5/1 at
Paddy Power), who hasn’t had too many balls to face in this tournament so far. He had also got dismissed for a duck in the previous game.
The Kochi Tuskers have had those three wins going for them, thanks to the way their batsmen have batted. Brendon McCullum (11/4 at
Blue Square) has had a couple of man of the match awards coming his way while Ravindra Jadeja (13/2 at
bet365) has done his job at the end of the innings. It is Mahela Jayawardene’s (11/4 at
Blue Square) form that has fallen away a bit since that World Cup final century – he has had one half-century but failed in the other four.
Prediction:
The Royals are in a sticky situation; a loss will make it rather difficult for them to make a comeback into the tournament. A win is the need of the hour for them.
