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Titans class to come through
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Eden Gardens full of runs
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Dre Russ a wager
Kolkata Knight Riders v Gujarat Titans
Saturday 29 April 11.00
TV: Live on Sky Sports
Team news
Kolakata are throwing punches. They downed RCB last time out to prove the golden rule right again (lay Bungalore at odds-on) and will have another crack here. Jason Roy has been a Godsend for them up front and they are now clearly setting their stall out to be aggressive at the death with David Wiese in the team.
Possible XII: Roy, Jagadeesan, Venkatesh, Rana, Rinku, Wiese, Narine, Arora, Umesh, Varun, Suyash
Gujarat dominated Mumbai Indians by posting 207 and then restricting their rivals to 152. It was almost the complete performance. Had they not mucked about close to the death by allowing Piyush Chawla and Nehal Wadhere to hit four sixes between them it would have been a big tick. They do have the occassional brain surge.
Possible XII: Gill, Saha, Hardik, Shankar, Miller, Manohar, Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Mohit, Shami, Noor, Little
Pitch report
As predicted, Eden Gardens has been a road. So far there have been scores of 204, 238 and 225. Although Gujarat are rated as the crack bowling unit in the tournament, it seems an unneccessary risk to start shorting a team's runs on a flat one, even though KKR have a stinker in their locker. We'd much prefer to bet Titans on the 20 overs par line in the late 180s.
How to play
No team has chased after going under the pump bowling first. This could be the game that a big one gets hunted down - so long as Titans are the ones with the rifles.
So there is the live chance that pre-toss the odds of 2.1411/10 KKR and 1.865/6 Gujarat could be flipped at the break with KKR batting first. But on pure form, ability and nous as it stands, Titans should be in the 1.75/7 region.
Gujarat to win and both teams to score 160 with Sportsbook could well prove popular.
Tops value
Jason Roy has been boosted to 7/2 with Sportsbook for top KKR bat while Shubman Gill is upped to 11/4. Gill is on his former home ground. But we do like Andre Russell still at 7/1. We know he can be promoted up the order and his hit rate on this market for KKR is worthy of respect.