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

Tobias Gourlay previews Saturday night's match between IPL's reigning champions and this season's table-toppers.

Venue and Conditions

The Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai is the colonial setting for the second meeting of the Mumbai Indians and the Deccan Chargers this week. No team batting first has yet come close to matching the 212-6 Mumbai reached in the first of the five IPL 2010 matches played here so far.

Team News

With six wins from their first seven games and a current winning streak of four, Mumbai are a couple of games clear at the top of the table. They've made only one change to the line-up - which was enforced by injury - during that most recent quartet of games and are unlikely to make any more for this one.

Deccan, meanwhile, have lost three matches in a row and slipped to second-bottom of the table, albeit with a game in hand over some teams. They overpaid for Kemar Roach at the most recent player auction and feel obliged to use him ahead of Chaminda Vaas. They say they dropped RP Singh, top bowler of IPL 2009, because of a shoulder injury last time out, but he was probably thrown out of the team for very poor form. In his place, Harmeet Singh was pretty bad too and Singh might well return for this match.

Match Odds

These two played each other last Sunday at Deccan's temporary home, also near Mumbai. With majority support from the crowd, the Indians made 172-7, thanks to Harbhajan Singh's last-ditch flailing. Matthew Hayden's 'obnoxious weed' then opened the bowling, dismissed Adam Gilchrist second ball, and the Chargers never recovered.

Deccan came off best from both encounters in their successful South African campaign last year and lead the head-to-head series 3-2, but the Indians are [1.69] favourites to win this one and, with Zaheer Khan and Lasith Malinga bowling well at the death, it's hard to make much of a case against them.

Top Batsman

In the eyes of the market, each team has one outstanding candidate in their respective markets. For the Chargers, Adam Gilchrist is favourite to score most runs for them. Until his most recent score of nine, it had been a tournament of diminishing returns for Deccan's captain. He top-scored with 54 in IPL 2010's opening game, but his totals since then have been 38, 33, 24, one, zero and finally that triumphant 9. He's best avoided at [3.55].

For the Indians, Sachin Tendulkar is the obvious market leader at [2.76]. The Little Master has twice as many fifties (four) as anyone else in the tournament except Jacques Kallis and has top-scored in five (once joint with Saurabh Tiwary) of their seven games up to now.

Mumbai's two Caribbean biffers, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo, are intriguingly priced at [9.0] each, but it's not clear how much of an opportunity they will get. Both have been used at three recently; both have been used further down the order. Tendulkar's opening partner, Shikhar Dhawan ([5.0]), has fifties from two of his most recent three innings.

Highest Individual Score

The Brabourne Stadium was the venue for Yusuf Pathan's brutal century three weeks ago and the highest score in three of the five games played here so far has exceeded 68.5 runs. In one of the other two, Jacques Kallis was poised on 66* when his team won. By Saturday lunchtime you should be able to find +68.5 runs at around [2.4] in the Highest Individual Score Market.

Trivia

In the only T20 International ever played at the Brabourne Stadium, India beat Australia by seven wickets. Adam Gilchrist opened for the Aussies and made a five-ball 12. Harbhajan Singh finished with the highly economical figures of 4-0-17-1, bowling ML Hayden for 17.

Tobias Gourlay Says: Back Mumbai Indians at [1.7] to beat Deccan Chargers

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