Indian Premier League - IPL / Tobias Gourlay / 02 April 2010 /

Tobias Gourlay previews the first of Saturday's two matches, which is a re-run of the 2008 IPL final.

Venue and Conditions

The Chennai Super Kings play their home games at Chepauk, where they have so far lost the toss twice and batted second three times, winning one match, losing one match and contesting one Super Over (lost to Kings XI Punjab).

Team News

Balaji, Tyagi, Sharma and Gony have all been tried, but the Super Kings are still at least one seamer short of a strong bowling attack. They won against Bangalore last time out, but their seamers combined for figures of 12-0-122-1. Thank goodness for Murali. They need Doug Bollinger - available after the end of the Australia-New Zealand Test series - and quickly.

Aaron Flinch, a right-hander and probably a regular headline-maker, might replace Michael Lumb - himself a replacement for Graeme Smith - at the top of Rajasthan's order, giving them a full complement of four Aussies in the team.

Match Odds

Although the Royals lost a couple of times to the Super Kings in South Africa last year, they have a perfect record against them in India. The reverse fixture was played a week ago in Ahmedabad and Shane Warne's team won by 17 runs. They also won all three of their meetings (including the final) in IPL 2008.

In spite of all this, the Super Kings are [1.73] favourites to win on Saturday. Doesn't seem fair really - perhaps it's an overreaction to the Bangalore win that ended a losing run of four - especially because they don't have a seam bowler worthy of a place in any of the other franchises. The Royals are light in a couple of departments and lost heavily to Delhi on Wednesday, but Shane Warne and Jeremy Snape are more capable than most of guiding them straight back to winning ways and they shouldn't be as long as [2.34].

Top Batsman

As ever, Matthew Hayden ([3.55]) will lead Chennai's Top Batsman market. Haydos has disappointed his backers in 6/8 matches so far. His opening partner, Murali Vijay ([5.0]), has outscored everyone in each of the Super Kings' last two matches. Beware of Michael Hussey, who joins the squad in time for this match and might replace Albie Morkel or even Hayden in the line-up.

Rajasthan's market is more open. Yusuf Pathan is a [4.7] favourite. The merits of his team-mates at the top of the order, who have only a couple of 50s between them, are hard to discern. Gautam Gambhir was reprimanded for calling them 'ordinary' recently. Be grateful that no sanctions await you for taking the same view.

Highest Six-Over Total

The Royals' bowlers have conceded the two highest six-over totals of the tournament so far. Their 9.72 economy rate in power-plays is almost one-and-a-half runs worse than anyone else's. With only the fifth-best batting run-rate in the same period, they look vulnerable to the Super Kings, who should become available in this market at [1.8] or better.

Trivia

Neither Hussey nor Bollinger played any part in Australia's recent two-match T20 series with New Zealand.

Tobias Gourlay Says: Back Rajasthan Royals at [2.34] to beat Chennai Super Kings

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