Champions League T20 Final: Malinga to mangle the Bangalore challenge

Twenty20 / Andrew Hughes / 08 October 2011 / 1

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Malinga is the Mumbai danger man

"Mumbai may be weakened by injury, but they have two advantages over their opponents. They have plenty of experience of playing on this pitch and they have Lasith Malinga."

Sunday's Champions League T20 Final is an all-IPL affair and Andrew Hughes thinks that the slinger from Sri Lanka holds the key to the contest.

Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians, Start 15:30 BST, Eurosport UK, Bangalore [1.77], Mumbai [2.26]

Team News
Bangalore's patience with Sreenath Aravind has surely run out after another horror show with the ball on Friday and Abhimanyu Mithun is the obvious replacement. Mohammad Kaif was brought in to steady the middle order and did his job well so should keep his place.

With the return to fitness of Suryakumar Yadav, Mumbai are no longer allowed to play five foreign players and it was the badly out of sorts Andrew Symonds who paid the price on Saturday. James Franklin would be the obvious choice to drop out if the Indians wanted to bring back Symonds, but that seems unlikely.

Venue and Conditions
The surface in Chennai has been low and slow all tournament, with the par score there some 20 runs fewer than in Bangalore and it is vital for batsmen to capitalise while the ball is still hard in the opening overs. There's a good chance we'll see some rain during the day, but hopefully there will be enough time to get a full game in.

Match Odds
On Friday, Bangalore once again gave up a 200 plus total but once again Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli chased it down. They are the most one-dimensional of the teams in the Champions League; consistently poor with the ball and relying entirely on their top three. But will Gayle, Kohli and Tillakaratne Dilshan be able to score quite so easily on this trickier surface, at a venue they have yet to encounter this tournament?

Mumbai may be weakened by injury, but they have two advantages over their opponents. They have plenty of experience of playing on this pitch and they have Lasith Malinga. The Sri Lankan effectively decapitated Somerset's innings on Saturday by removing danger men Peter Trego and Roelof van der Merwe. On a tricky pitch, all Mumbai need to do to is knock over Gayle and Kohli and the rest should fall into place. Backing the Indians at [2.26] is the sensible play.

Top Batsman
Once again it was Gayle who top scored for Bangalore in the semi-final and at around [3.5] he will have plenty of support. But the value may lie in the often-underrated Kohli, who has plenty of fighting spirit and should be backed at [4.5] or better.

It's harder to pick a candidate for Mumbai, but with Keiron Pollard not quite himself, opener Aiden Blizzard is the selection. He scored an impressive half-century in the semi-final and will have the advantage of batting while the ball is at its hardest. He is worth a look at around [4.0]

Best Bet
Back Mumbai Indians to win @ 2.26

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Anonymous | 09 October 2011

i thnk banglre will win ths final...