IPL Betting: Kings Punjab XI v Kolkata Knight Riders

Find Me A 100 Winner / Andy Richmond / 20 April 2009 / 1 Comments

Both teams lost in their first matches and are unsurprisingly looking to get points on the board in this one. It should be a high-scoring match and it may pay to side with the outsiders, says Andy Richmond.

Team News

Both of these sides started the IPL competition with a loss and the temptation will be to make changes to their sides.

The Knight Riders appeared to be dazzled by their flash and brash outfits in their opening game against the Deccan Chargers and their big three of at the top of the order never fired, expect better this time. The Knight Riders' bowling could do with a shake up too but I expect them to keep faith with the "failed" attack for one more game, although Arjuntha Mendis would provide more guile and penetration than the uninspiring seam attack and he could provide a useful spin partnership with Karthik.

Kings XI are limited with what they can change with players absent and injured, to be honest they started well enough against Delhi in Cape Town in their opener and only lost momentum at the tactics break. The batting certainly has enough firepower to match the Knight Riders with opener Karan Goel (38 off 21 balls) looking particularly dangerous.

Venue, Pitch, Conditions

This and the later game will be played at Kingsmead Durban - some big scores have been rattled up here in T20 internationals and King's captain Yuvraj Singh will have happy memories of this ground , as he hit six sixes in an over here off Stuart Broad in Sept 2007. But the weather forecast looks wet for Tuesday and we could get a rain-curtailed game here with conditions proving better for bowling than batting.

Match Odds

Kings XI are the outsiders of the duo here at around [2.2] and to my mind that underrates their chance here. The Knight Riders - [1.91] look as though they could implode at any minute and given the captaincy woes and the ambivalent nature of a few of their leading batters I would much rather side with the "Kings" on this occasion as the side with the tradable scope.

Top Batsman

With the rain doubts surrounding this game you have to look towards the opening duos to the potential plays in this market and given his clean and fluent knock on Sunday - Kings' opener Karan Goel at around [5.5] would provide value here.

With the Kolkata side the big three - McCullum, Gayle and Ganguly are always going to dominate the odds and with the "G" men looking to my eye slightly disinterested in their last game I'd have to plump for McCullum on their side at around [4.0] to top score.

Featured Market

Even with reduced batting time the Kings managed to post 7 maximums on Sunday and they have the capacity to outscore the Knight Riders in this department so in the most sixes match market - any odds against on the boys from the Punjab should be snapped up.

Comments (1)

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