Jubilant RR will face KKR
Two matches and two that’s the tale of Rajasthan Royals. The team which did not had enough funds during auction to buy good players is giving good teams run for their money under the magical leadership of legendary leg-spinner Shane Warne who is their coach also. Today they will face new look Kolkata Knight Riders at Jaipur.
So far Rajasthan Royals beat Deccan Chargers and Delhi Daredevils which did not look like formidable side so far. Game against KKR will give clear idea about Rajasthan Royals because KKR is far more formidable team compared to Deccan and Daredevils. So big test ahead for Warnie and his team. If Shane Watson will be included in Rajasthan Royals then it will become far more formidable. So far Rahul Dravid, Johan Botha has done good job with the bat and Shane Warne is leading from the front, so things looks bright for RR but KKR is too good team.
KKR is the team which lost its first match against defending champions CSK but came back well to win its next match against Deccan Chargers. This year KKR got the face-lift as owner of KKR bought new players in auction. Gambhir, captain of KKR is the costliest player in IPL 4 as he fetched $2.4 million in auction. He is in good form right now and will look to win this game for KKR. Yusuf Pathan is the another key player in this line-up. He was with Rajasthan Royals for last 3 seasons so his inputs will definitely help KKR. Brett Lee and Shakib Al Hasan has joined this team and this makes KKR more formidable. So far their bowling lacked some teeth but with inclusion of Lee, bowling becomes far more potent. Manoj Tiwary is in good touch in middle-order. Jacques Kallis is providing them best of the starts, so KKR is favorites to win this contest.
Team Info:
Rajasthan Royals
Rahul Dravid, Pankaj Singh, Aakash Chopra, Abhishek Raut, Aditya Dole, Ajinkya Rahane, Amit Paunikar, Ashok Menaria, Deepak Chahar, Dishant Yagnik, Faiz Fazal, Nayan Doshi, Pinal Shah, Samad Fallah, Siddharth Trivedi, Stuart Binny, Amit Singh, Dinesh Salunkhe, Swapnil Asnodkar, Sumit Narwal, Ankeet Chavan (Foreign) Shane Warne, Shane Watson, Ross Taylor, Johan Botha, Paul Collingwood, Shaun Tait.Shane Warne(Coach/Captain).
Team Info:
Kolkata Knightriders
Gautam Gambhir(Captain), Yusuf Pathan, Manoj Tiwary, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Jaidev Unadkat, Iqbal Abdulla, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Manvinder Singh Bisla(Wicket-Keeper), Pradeep Sangwan, Rajat Bhatia, Sarabjit Ladda, Shami Ahmed, Shreevats Goswami (Foreign) Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin(Wicket-Keeper), Shakib Al Hassan, Brett Lee, Eoin Morgan, Ryan ten Doeschate, James Pattinson.Dave Whatmore(Coach)
Kochi will take on Sachin’s team.
Losing 2 out of 2 is the story of Kochi Tuskers Kerala. Big test ahead for them as they take on Sachin led Mumbai Indians today at Mumbai. Kochi batting looked good in both the matches but their bowling has been very poor. Both RP Singh and Sreesanth are going over 10 runs an over in opening spell and also failed to pick up early wickets. Kochi is one of the tow new teams included in this edition of IPL and so far their performance is disastrous. They have very good captain in Mahela Jayawardene but he failure with the bat causing lot more trouble to Kochi team. They have good all-rounder in Ravindra Jadeja but his batting abilities have been not utilised properly so far. Kochi have to find ways to win the game against Mumbai and winning against Mumbai Indians will going to be uphill task because Mumbai Indian is far more superior than Kochi. But Kochi have to win this game at any cost just to gain momentum.
On the other hand Sachin led Mumbai is doing very well. They won both their matches so far. They defeated formidable team like RCB and their confidence is sky high at the moment. Malinga is providing them early wickets and Sachin is leading from the front in batting. Youngsters like Ambati Rayadu and R.Satish are doing well in the company of Sachin. Mumbai Indians has continued their good run and gaining great momentum with every match. They have likes of Kieron Pollard, Jacobs and Harbhajan Singh in their ranks who can turn the match anytime. So Mumbai starts as favorite in this game.
Team Info:
Mumbai Indians
Sachin Tendulkar (c), Harbhajan Singh, Rohit Sharma, Munaf Patel, Abu Nechim Ahmed, Aditya Tare, Ali Murtuza, Ambati Rayudu, Dhawal Kulkarni, Pawan Suyal, Rajagopal Sathish, Surul Kanwar, Surya Kumar Yadav, T Suman, Yazvendra Singh Chahal, (Foreign) Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Andrew Symonds, Davy Jacobs, James Franklin, Moises Henriques, Alden Blizzard, Dilhara Fernando
Team Info:
Kochi Tuskers
VVS Laxman, S Sreesanth, RP Singh, Parthiv Patel(Wicket-Keeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Ramesh Powar, R Vinay Kumar, B Akhil, Chandan Madan, Deepak Chowghule, Kedar Jadhav, Raiphi Gomez, Sushant Marathe, Tanmay Srivastava, Y Gnanswara Rao, Yashpal Singh, Prashant Padmanabahan, (Foreign) Mahela Jayawardene (Captain), Brendon McCullum(Wicket-Keeper), Steven Smith, Muttiah Muralitharan, Brad Hodge, Thisara Perera, Steve O'Keefe, Owais Shah, Michael Klinger, John Hastings. Jeff Lawson(Coach)
Deccan broke the home jinx as they beat RCB
RCB started as favorites in this match. They won the toss and elected to field first which tilted the match slightly more in their favour as pitch was having greenish look. But hats-off to Deccan batsmen who batted brilliantly on pitch which had something in it for the bowlers and put up more than competitive score on the board. It was one of the day when Deccan never put the foot wrong in entire match. Batting came good, bowling and fielding complimented the batting well and finally Deccan managed the win at home after all the previous losses.
Deccan replaced Ishank Jaggi with Sunny Sohal, the ex-Kings XI player. Dhawan and Sohal opened the innings for Deccan in this match but Dhawan fell cheaply in trying to up the scoring. It looked like, once again Deccan will falter but Sangakkara and Sohal knitted good partnership between them which provided the platform to their middle-order to put up huge score. After dong brilliant partnership Sanga fell but in came ex-RCB boy Bharat Chipli who played brilliant knock and scored brilliant half-century against its ex-team and took the score past 170. RCB bowling failed to make an impression in this match though pitch was favouring the bowlers. Their was clear lateral movement available off the pitch yet Deccan bowlers failed to use it.
Chasing marginal big total RCB lost its momentum very early as they lost Mayank Agarwal, Dilshan, Ab DeVilliers and Sourabh Tiwary in quick succession. Vettori sent Zaheer Khan as a pinch hitter but that move also back-fired as Zaheer faced 3 balls and scored none and Steyn bowled him. RCB was in all sorts of trouble but Virat Kohli and Pujara did wonderful partnership and kept the RCB hopes alive. Especially Kohli played brilliant innings but when run-rate goes past 15 then it becomes difficult for any batsmen to keep up with the run-rate and if he tries to do so then often he lose his wicket and that’s what happened with Pujara and Kohli. Both tried to up the scoring but lost their wickets in the process. It was heartening to see that Ishant Sharma was consistently hit the high 140 km speed mark in this match and he looked in good rhythm while he was bowling. Few of his deliveries clocked over 150 km speed as well. This spell of his certainly give him lot of confidence as he bowled with speed and maintained good line and length throughout the spell.
Before this match Deccan lost all its ho
me matches but they managed first win on home soil and hopefully this will give some momentum to Deccan campaign. Bharat Chipli batted brilliantly for Deccan. RCB has lost some momentum after win in first match as they lost two consecutive matches and need to re-think over their strategy. RCB have the best batting line-up among all the teams in IPL.
Man of the Match
Dale Steyn
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