Lucknow Super Giants v Gujarat Titans: Mayers may go again

• Titans won both matches between them last season

• Advantage to the chaser in in Lucknow

• Mayers has been LSG Top bat in three out of six games

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LSG Team News

Lucknow showed great match awareness to beat Rajasthan on Wednesday and just the sort of adaptability you need for a tournament like this.

When you're playing on very different wickets with very contrasting par scores you just need to make sure you're always in the game and that's exactly what they did.

Their 154/7 may not have looked like much at the time but it was a slower and trickier surface than it seemed and in the end it proved to be just about enough.

Not that it seemed that way for much of the Rajasthan innings. The Royals' openers started steadily, much as LSG's had, but wickets proved crucial because it was a hard track to get started on and in the end the squeeze proved too much for the Royals' middle-order.

Marcus Stoinis was finally given a few overs with the ball and his dismissal of both openers (2-28 off 4) to go with a handy 21 off 16 with the bat gave him the man-of-the-match award. He needed it because his place was coming under pressure from Quinton de Kock.

Kyle Mayers with 51 and Avesh Khan with three wickets were the other big contributors to the cause in a team that looks well-balanced.

But they need to make faster starts with the bat. It worked out this time but with a strong batting line-up they need to take more risks early on in the future.

Possible XI: Mayers, Rahul, Hooda, Stoinis, Pooran, Krunal, Badoni, Mishra, Ul-Haq, Bishnoi, Khan.

Titans Team News

The Titans were on the wrong end of a Shimron Hetmyer assault on Monday that saw the Royals get home with four balls to spare chasing a healthy total.

Given they dismissed both openers for 1 run between them and are meant to have one of the best bowling line-ups in the tournament and it's quite a cause for concern.

Overseas bowlers Rashid Khan and Alzarri Joseph went for 11.5 and 15.66 an over respectively and you're not going to win many games when that happens.

Earlier there had been decent contributions from the likes of Shubman Gill (45) and David Miller (46) but no-one got to 50 and that will also have raised a few eyebrows.

One of the secrets to their success last year was winning lots of very tight games but two of their last three games were defeats in narrow matches so maybe it's a sign they won't have the rub of the green as much as they did last year.

Joseph may keep his place despite that horror show last time out because he'd been good up to that point.

Possible XI: Gill, Saha, Sudharsan, Pandya, Miller, Manohar, Tewatia, Khan, Joseph, Shami, Sharma.

Pitch report

We're at Lucknow for this one.

Punjab chased 160 with two balls to spare at the weekend and before that LSG chased 129 against SRH to suggest it was a tough wicket to bat first on, with advantage to the chaser.

But this is also where LSG set DC 194 to win and won it by 50 runs to somewhat rubbish that theory.

Long-term stats show that 157.7 is the average first innings score with 193 the average first innings winning score.

Either way, it's certainly a chasing ground as per long-term trends with 66.7% of matches won by the side batting second. The skippers will be well aware of that and will surely choose to bowl if given the chance.

How to play

The Titans are marginal favourites at 1.9620/21. In the table LSG are four from six and the Titans three from five so not much in it in that regard.

The reason for the Titans being jollies may have a fair bit to do with the fact that they beat LSG in both their matches against them last year. Both pretty comfortably as well, winning by five wickets and 62 runs. Given the teams are pretty similar in terms of personnel to last year and that has some relevance.

But it's a hard game to call and the tight odds don't offer much room for manoeuvre so the best advice is to try to get 2.26/5 or bigger in-play on the chaser and hope the trend for chasing teams winning stays true.

LSG Top Batsman

The LSG strategy seems to be for the two openers to set a platform, try to be there at least at the halfway mark and then let the rest of the side come in and score as many as they can at the death.

The top bat winners' stats certainly seem to back that up.

Mayers has so far top scored three times (73, 53 and 51) Rahul twice (35 and 74) and Marcus Stoinis once (65). So 5/6 won by one of the two openers seems to suggest that opportunities on anyone not opening to win this are limited.

Tempting as the likes of 6/1 on Pooran and 17/2 on Stoinis are, they're likely to be coming in with not that many overs to go and with either Rahul or Mayers (or both) already with a score on the board.

Following that, there may be interested in the boosted 11/4 on perennial winner of this market, Rahul.

But with one more win already this season, excellent form carried on from that series against South Africa and at a bigger price (7/2), we prefer Mayers.

LSG Top Bowler

This has been a season that's seen a few old-timers make some good comebacks in the IPL. The likes of Ajinkya Rahane and Piyush Chawla examples of that.

As is Amit Mishra. Aged 40, he's found a place in the LSG side as their experienced seen-it-all-before steady spinner. After three matches he's gone at just seven an over and taken three wickets.

Assuming he gets four overs and a couple of all-rounders share four overs between them, he should give you a good run for your money, targeting the stumps and inviting batsmen to attack.

His task may be made considerably easier if favourite Mark Wood (11 wickets in 4 games) misses out for a second game in a row.

Best of all about Mishra is his price, 5/1. A tie on say two wickets would see a dead-heat and a decent payout.

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