Chennai Super Kings v Lucknow Super Giants: Mayers on the money

• Lucknow chased 211 against CSK last season

• CSK lost their first game of the season, LSG won it

• Kyle Mayers provides two good betting opportunities

Chennai Super Kings v Lucknow Super Giants
Monday April 3, 15:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

CSK Team News

CSK went down to Gujarat on the opening day of the season. There wasn't much wrong with their score of 178/7, slightly above par thanks to a super knock of 92 from just 50 balls off the bat of Ruturaj Gaikwad.

But they still left a few runs out there. Ambati Raydudu and Shivam Dube could only manage to score at a run-a-ball and had Ravindra Jadeja stayed out there a bit longer rather than finding the man on the fence second ball, they may well have added another 15 runs to their total.

Jadeja and Mitchell Santner bowled a decent eight overs of spin between them, Rajvardhan Hangargekar took 3-36 but there was no gun bowler to turn to really stem the flow of runs; Gujarat always looked like they'd get there in the end. Neither Ben Stokes nor Moeen Ali bowled at all so CSK may have to readdress the balance of the side at some stage because just using five bowlers rarely cuts it at this level.

Possible XI: Gaikwad, Conway, Ali, Stokes, Jadeja, Rayudu, Dube, Dhoni, Santner, Chahar, Hangargekar.

Lucknow news

A win by 50 runs over Delhi was about as good a start as we could have expected from LSG, who put in a thoroughly professional performance to get their campaign under way.

A rare bad day for the bat from KL Rahul meant it was over to Kyle Mayers to set the tone and his 73 off 38, including seven sixes, was just the sort of top-order aggression that's going to win you lots of games.

The middle-order players didn't hang around for that long but they all scored at better than a run-a-ball to keep up the momentum, while Nicholas Pooran did even better with 36 off 21 to get them to a big total of 193/6. Will this be the season Pooran finally comes good in the IPL?

With the ball, Mark Wood took the stuffing out of Delhi's innings, bowling Prithvi Shaw and Mitchell Marsh in successive deliveries and ending up with figures of 5/14. You'd expect them to be unchanged.

Possible XI: Rahul, Mayers, Hooda, Pandya, Stoinis, Pooran, Badoni, Gowtham, Khan, Bishnoi, Unadkat, Wood.

Pitch report

Chennai are at home for the first time since 2019 and will be hoping that stalwarts like Ali, Gaikwad, Jadeja, Dhoni and Chahar can make the most of knowledge of home conditions to get off the mark.

They'd love to have had Maheesh Theekshana available for this but he continues to recover from an injury. But it would be a surprise that on a wicket that takes spin, Ali didn't have a bowl this time. 165 is probably about par here with 175 a good score first up.

How to play

One of the problems with having new IPL teams is there isn't much data to go by. But what we do have might be quite significant.

At Brabourne last year, CSK put 210/7 on the board, which was chased by LSG with three balls remaining thanks to fine knocks by Quinton de Kock (61 off 45), KL Rahul (40 off 26) and Evin Lewis (55 off 23), though Rahul is the only one of those three who will feature here.

So, advantage LSG in that regard. They're slight favourites at 1.910/11 and with that win under their belts, the one from Saturday and a slightly-better balanced side, look to be justified favourites.

Even though as a team, they won't have played at a ground with Chennai's somewhat unique characteristics. It's not a bad price and waiting for them to hit around 2.35/4 in-play on the Exchange if CSK make a good start, could be the even better way to go.

CSK Top Batsman

The Sportsbook odds-compilers are taking a bit of a chance with Gaikwad here. They boosted his price last time out to 7/2, watched him win with a fine 92 and are laying those same odds once again.

But at 19/1 you can back Jadeja in this market. He came in lower than expected last time out at seven but with Rayudu and Dube both getting bogged down, they might promote him up to 4 or 5 this time on a wicket he knows so well.

His brand of swashbuckling batting generally gives one or two top bat wins a season and the price here is bigger than usual, so he's worth half a point.

LSG Top Bowler/Man-of-the-match

Kyle Mayers provides plenty of of betting interesting opportunities, too. It's 10/3 he top scores for Lucknow for a second game in a row and that looks decent for an international opening batsman who had already shown good form against South Africa a week or so ago.

But he's perhaps of greater interest to be their top bowler at 8/1.

He only bowled the one over which went for seven runs the other day but he might get more of a chance here and is often bowled in the Powerplay overs by the West Indies, so that might present an opportunity.

But we also like the 12/1 for him to be man-of-the-match.

He was unlucky to miss out to Wood on the award on Saturday and another big knock with a possible wicket will have him bang in contention, again. Especially given we think the Super Giants have the upper hand here.