Its the first Saturday of the new IPL season, which means we have two matches on offer tonight. Chennai Super Kings enjoys home support for the 2nd time in three days as they are set to welcome SunRisers Hyderabad who will be playing their first match of the tournament, while KKR are also at home as they entertain the underachievers RCB. Here are the reviews.
RCB has had an explosive batting line up ever since its inception, but have failed to click as a unit on countless occasions. the troika of Gayle, De Villiers and Kohli strike fear into any bowling attack and much will depend on how these 3 fair. With the addition of Karthick, Sammy and Badrinath, RCB has added depth to the batting and will look to bat the opposition out of the game. The already weak bowling line up has been dealt a big blow with injuries to Mitchell Starc and Adam Milne, and it will be left to Varun Aaron to spearhead the pace attack, while Chahal and Iqbal Abdulla could be the spinners.
CSK overcame DD in the opening match by a soliatry to make a winning start to an IPL campaign for only the third time in 8 seasons. In defending a modest score of 150, the Super Kings enhanced their reputation of coming out on top of close encounters, more often than not. In Dhoni they have a shrewd captain who knows the squad inside out.McCullum and Raina missed out on the new pitch at Chennai last time out and will be looking to make amends, especially as the Kiwi skipper comes up aginst Steyn for the first time since the World Cup semifinal where he belted the South African paceman all over the ground.The team is well settled and should see no changes to the one which featured on Thursday.
They come up against a Sunrisers squad, which made some shrewd purchases, especially the overseas players, at the auctions.Kevin Pietersen was supposed to be the main man, but he has hence pulled out in favour of county cricket as he attempts to make an international comeback. Still in the likes of new skipper David Warner, Kane Williamson, Dale Steyn, Trent Boult, Moises Henriques they possess an enviable collection of overseas talent. Picking the four out of the lot will give headaches for coach Tom Moody. SRH also possess the most potent fast bowling line up of any of the teams in the IPL. Steyn, Boult, Buvaneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma - Add Praveen Kumar to the lot and its the stuff of dreams. Team selection will be the key as far as the Hyderabad franchisee is concerned. Shikar Dhawan, Naman Ojha and Karn Sharma provide the Indian flavour while Lokesh Rahul will be looking to make his case for national team selection by converting his good domestic form to the T20 format.
KKR stretched their winning streak in the IPL to 10 matches with victory over MI on the opening day of the new season. A good batting effort by the Indian top five of the Kolkata outfit saw them comfortably chase a stiff target of 169, after a brilliant innings by Rohit Sharma who continued his love affair with Eden Gardens. The traditional slow surface has been replaced by a much faster one, which hampered the spin department very badly last time out. However with a good bowling trio of Morkel, Yadav and Russel, things are pretty much fine. Gambhir, Manish Pandey and Suryakumar Yadav all looked in fine form the other day and the likes of Uthappa, who missed out on Wednesday night and Shakib whose service with the bat wasn't even required but had a rare off night with the ball, will look to make amends.
RCB has had an explosive batting line up ever since its inception, but have failed to click as a unit on countless occasions. the troika of Gayle, De Villiers and Kohli strike fear into any bowling attack and much will depend on how these 3 fair. With the addition of Karthick, Sammy and Badrinath, RCB has added depth to the batting and will look to bat the opposition out of the game. The already weak bowling line up has been dealt a big blow with injuries to Mitchell Starc and Adam Milne, and it will be left to Varun Aaron to spearhead the pace attack, while Chahal and Iqbal Abdulla could be the spinners.
No comments:
Post a Comment