Punjab Kings v Mumbai Indians v Rajasthan Royals: Look to the Sky

• Head-to-head between the two is a perfect 15/15

• Both teams aced big chases on Sunday

• Sky Yadav has two fifties in his last three

Wednesday May 3, 15:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

Mumbai Team News

Punjab's win over CSK on Sunday illustrated two important points.

The first is that this has been an extremely unpredictable tournament with everyone more than capable of beating everyone else.

Sure, Gujarat look just about nailed-on for a Top 2 finish and Delhi now look out of it given they've just started too poorly and given themselves too much to do in a league where every win is hard to come by. But just about everyone else is still in it and predicting who will finish Top 4, let alone in what order, is anyone's guess.

The second point is that following the 'anything could happen' nature of the tournament so far, it makes this all incredibly difficult to predict from a betting perspective, a task made even harder by the Impact Sub rule.

Both CSK and Rajasthan should have won on Sunday at very decent pre-match odds after posting big scores; both lost.

CSK really should have defended that 200 at a ground they know so well with decent spin options, but they allowed the boundaries to keep coming and ultimately paid the price.

But credit to Punjab who adopted a similar approach in the chase to what CSK have been doing over the years: be aggressive, go for boundaries from the start and you're better off getting out doing that than hanging around and wasting deliveries.

From the Top 6, only Atharva Taide had a strike rate of under 100. The next lowest was 145 from Sam Curran. Jitesh Sharma's 21 came at a strike rate of 210.

It's a strategy fraught with danger but at least they seem committed to it and will win a few games following it.

They're up to fifth now.

Possible XI Singh, Dhawan, Taide, Livingstone, Curran, Sharma, Shahrukh, Raza, Rabada, Brar, Chahar, Singh.

Mumbai Team news

Mumbai, as touched on just now, won on Sunday in very similar circumstances to Punjab.

Their chase of 213 was even steeper than that of Punjab's and followed as similar blueprint. No-one made a huge score but two scores in the 20s, two in the 40s and one in the 50s, all at breakneck pace, were just about enough to get them over the line.

Skipper Rohit Sharma probably owes the Royals' Jason Holder a drink for bowling three full tosses to Tim David in the last over; all three disappeared for six. Credit to David but you'd expect better from a player as experienced as Holder.

Mumbai are not without their flaws, of course. They did after all concede 212 to begin with and their bowling remains a worry.

But they'll be dangerous in a chase with Aussie duo Cameron Green and David finding some form and Tilak Varma proving very consistent at playing priceless cameos. Perhaps most important of all, Sky Yadav seems to be back after a terrible last six months or so.

Possible XISharma, Kishan, Green, Yadav, Varma, David, Chawla, Archer, Kartikeya, Meredith, Khan.

Pitch report

We're at Mohali. 191-5, 153-8, 174-4, 257-5 are the first innings scores here so far. The ones in bold were won by the side batting first. That's a first-innings average of 193.75.

That's considerably higher than the overall IPL average here over the years, which is just 167.

There's a slight toss bias with 52.5% of matches here at Mohali won by the chaser over the years but there's not much in and 3/4 this season have been won by the team batting first.

So quite contrasting stats regarding Mohali, not making it too easy to come to any definite conclusions. But after both were so good in the chase on Sunday, they might decide to try their luck batting second again.

How to play

It's an immature market on the Exchange at the time of writing but with Sportsbook going 9/10 the pair, we'd expect the market to be extremely tight once it is priced up.

There's not much to choose between them. Punjab are 5/9, Mumbai 4/8 from their respective matches so far this season, so it's pretty close there. Both are fresh from morale-boosting wins in matches they went into as underdogs after acing tough chases.

Remarkably, the head-to-head between these two is 15/15 which is a bit surprising when you consider those years of Mumbai dominance and Punjab failure.

So, with no angle to play with, we won't.

Look to the Sky

Cameron Green was our pick last time out at 9/2 and his 44 was pipped by Sky Yadav (55) and right at the end, Tim David (45), too.

Quite what went wrong with Sky to the extent that he got three golden ducks in a row in ODIs a few weeks ago, only he will know. Or not. Sometimes it's just a case of 'that's cricket for you'.

But he's not a man to have lost faith in his own ability or processes and seems to be back in form after scores of 57 off 26 and 55 off 29 in two of his last three outings.

Green (9/2) deserves respect but as mentioned last time, openers Kishan and Sharma are having a hard time of it with just one fifty each in eight matches.

So Sky should have plenty of time to play a big innings and with his, 'sky-high' strike rate, can easily allow him to catch up if his entry is a bit delayed this time.

Either way, 5/1 is far too big a price for a player of his ability.

MOM options

Sam Curran (9/1) and Cameron Green (10/1) both made important contributions last time out as their teams won and both are capable of winning the match with either bat or ball.

Both may well get their four overs with the ball and both should bat in the Top 5, so have every chance of playing an innings of substance.

There's no obvious favourite here in terms of who might win the game so it could be worth splitting stakes between these two star men, who could have a big impact on the game one way or another.