IPL 2021 RR vs KKR Match 18 Preview

image: HotStar

Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders will play against each other in Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. This is the penultimate match of the Indian Premier League season in this stadium. The match is going to start at 7:30 PM today.

Till now, both the teams played four matches each and won a match each. Rajasthan won the match against the Delhi Capitals and Kolkata Knight Riders won the match against the Sunrisers Hyderabad. In the remaining matches, both the teams lost few matches with a close margin.

Rajasthan Royals

This team lost their best opener, Ben Stokes, due to a finger injury, Jos Buttler is replacing him as the opener. Jofra Archer is ruled out from IPL as his hand is injured while cleaning a fish tank in his house during his own free time.

In the last match, when the openers lost their wickets early, the middle order and lower middle-order batsmen fought a good fight and scored 177 runs against Royal Challengers Bangalore. This is a good sign for the team, but, they are not using this for their advantage in the games.

Jaydev Unadkat took 3 wickets in the powerplay against Chennai Super Kings and the debutant Chetan Sakaryia is also taking the wickets. Those bowlers are not taking the wickets when the team needs it the most.

The captain made a tough call not to take that single against the Punjab Kings in the last over. In the next match, Chris Moriss won the match for the team against the Delhi Capitals by hitting sixes while chasing.

The team needs some luck and a good turn of events to win today's match against the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Rajasthan Royals Squad

Probable Playing 11

 1 Jos Buttler (wk), 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal/Anuj Rawat, 3 Sanju Samson (capt & wk), 4 Shivam Dube, 5 David Miller, 6 Riyan Parag, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Chris Morris, 9 Jaydev Unadkat, 10 Chetan Sakariya, 11 Mustafizur Rahman/Andrew Tye

Kolkata Knight Riders

This team has the strongest openers compared to the Rajasthan Royals. Nitish Rana and Shubman Gill are my choices of opening pair compared to inconsistent RR openers Jos Buttler and Manan Vohra.

Both the team openers have lost their wickets either in the powerplay or in the next over to the pacers. And the batsman at the 3rd position in the batting line up seems to find it difficult to settle in that pressure as a result of losing the wicket early.

This team also works hard and puts all the effort into winning the game but bad luck ad some wrong decisions pulling them away from the victories.

Today's match is going to be a wonderful chance for both teams to show their strengths and bounce back and show that they are in the game.

The team that dominates from the start is going to win the match. Both the teams are failing to show that dominance in the matches that happened till now.

Kolkata Knight Riders Squad

Probable Playing 11

1 Nitish Rana, 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Sunil Narine, 5 Eoin Morgan (capt), 6 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Pat Cummins, 9 Kamlesh Nagarkoti/Shivam Mavi, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Prasidh Krishna

IPL 2021 MI vs PBKS Match 17 report

image: BCCI

Miracles do happen in the Indian Premier League, exceptional bowling from the team after losing two consecutive matches is really amazing and a good comeback for the team.

After winning the toss, KL Rahul chose to bowl first and his plan to restrict the Mumbai Indians to a low score was worked. Ravi Bishnoi and Mohammed Shami helped the team by taking 3 wickets each and just by giving 21 runs in 4 overs.

Mumbai Indians lost their first wicket in Deepak Hooda's second over, Quinton de Kock was caught by Henriques in the mid-on. Then Ishan Kishan was caught by KL Rahul behind the wicket in the 7th over. By this time, the run rate is just 3.75, the Punjab bowlers and fielders are not giving any singles at this point.

Then with help of Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma made 79 runs in 56 balls. They both tried really hard to revive the match but the Punjab Kings bowlers are not giving any chance to the Mumbai Indians batsmen to score any runs.

At the beginning of the death over, MI lost Suryakumar Yadav's after he was caught by Chris Gayle at the short third man in Ravi Bishnoi's over. Rohit Sharma lost his wicket in the next over to Mohammed Shami and both Pandya brothers lost their wicket at the end.

Once again the mighty Mumbai Indians barely scored any runs in the death overs. This is the one reason the team has failed to secure a victory. At the end of the innings, Mumbai Indians scored 131 for a loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs.

With a moderate target to chase, Punjab Kings started their innings with KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal. They might have had a tough 1st over but, the table turned from the 2nd over. 

Both the openers started to maintain a decent run rate till the fall of their first wicket in the match. In the Depak Chahar's 8th over, Mayank Agarwal was caught by Suryakumar Yadav. This is the only wicket Mumbai Indians managed to take in the second innings.

With the help of Chris Gayle, KL Rahul reached the target of 132 runs with 14 balls remaining.  As MI bowlers are desperate for a wicket and breakthrough, they have appealed for Chris Gayles to run out. But the TV umpire rejected it.

Overall, The Punjab Kings showed their dominance and exploited the Mumbai Indians weak batting lineup perfectly. If they continued like this they might be in the top 4 in the points table at the end.

Mumbai Indians need to change their batting lineup and experiment with a new team. Eventhough the same team won the cup last year, the very same team is not winning now as they should.

IPL 2021 PBKS vs MI Match 17 Preview

image: Hotstar

Today, Punjab Kings will be playing against the Mumbai Indians in M.A Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai at 7: 30 PM.

Till now, both the teams have played two matches, in which Mumbai Indians won two and Punjab Kings won only a match. Right now, the MI is in the 4th position in the points table and PBKS is the last but one position.

If PBKS wins today's match, they will go to the fifth position and the MI's position is depending on the run rate they achieve in this match.

Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians lost to the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the first match and to the Delhi Capitals in the 13th match of this season. In the first match, they were unable to score runs in the death overs as Harshal Patel took 5 wickets, in which  4 wickets are in the last over alone.

In the 13th match against Delhi Capitals, the team lost the top-order wickets in the powerplay and unable to score the runs later on.  As the score is less, the Delhi Capitals openers scored the most runs and confirmed the victory to their team.

Mumbai Indians need to change their batting lineup or the batsmen need to score more runs in the middle and death overs. The openers need to make use of the powerplay to score more runs without losing the wickets at the early stage of the game.

MI batsmen need to be cautious with Mohammed Shami and Arshdeep Singh in the powerplay and in the death overs.

The Mumbai Indians need more dot balls while bowling to Punjab Kings, as their openers are very dangerous and once they settled in the crease, they will make more runs in the over. MI bowlers need to avoid this situation to leak runs. They need as many wickets in the powerplay to stop them from scoring more.

Mumbai Indians Squad

Probable Playing 11

 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Rohit Sharma (capt), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Ishan Kishan, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Jayant Yadav, 9 Rahul Chahar, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

Punjab Kings

Punjab Kings won their first against Rajasthan Royals out of four matches they played. They won that match because Sanju Samson hit the ball 10 yards short to the boundary. In the remaining matches, all of them are one-sided from the very beginning.

PBKS have good bowlers and batsmen but they are failing to take control of the match while playing. The team is basing on the miracles rather than their players. The opposition team are controlling them more than them. 

I have one suggestion for the Punjab Kings, send Sharukh Khan ahead of Nicholas Pooran. Khan is the only consistent player in the lower middle order. 

If they continued to play like this, the change of name, change of jersey, change of players will have no use. Punjab Kings need some miracle to happen to win this game.

Punjab Kings Squad

Probable playing 11

 1 KL Rahul (capt & wk), 2 Mayank Agarwal, 3 Chris Gayle, 4 Deepak Hooda, 5 Nicholas Pooran, 6 Shahrukh Khan, 7 Moises Henriques, 8 Fabian Allen/Ravi Bishnoi, 9 Mohammed Shami, 10 M Ashwin, 11 Arshdeep Singh

IPL 2021 RCB vs RR match 16 Report

image: BCCI

After winning the toss for the second time in this season of IPL, Virat Kohli chose to bowl first and it did work for them. RCB took 3 wickets in the powerplay and slowed the Rajasthan Royals run rate.

Jos Buttler and Manan Vohra opened the innings for the Rajasthan Royals, in Mohammed Siraj's 3rd over, Jos Buttler got after a successful appeal of an LBW. 

In Kyle Jamieson's 4th over, Manan Vohra caught out by Kane Richardson at Mid-on. Followed by David miller in the next over, a successful DRS decision from the TV umpire declared him out in Mohammed Siraj's 5th over.

By this point, Rajasthan Royals were in deep trouble. They lost 3 wickets in the powerplay and scored just 33 runs. The misery followed the RR in the 8th over too, Sanju Samson was caught out in the Midwicket by Glenn Maxwell.

Then, Shivam Dube and Rayan Parag revived the RR innings by scoring a 66 runs partnership in 39 balls. Both the players departed, later on. The lower middle-order batsmen Rahul Twatia scored 40 runs in 23 balls which put RR in a comfortable scoring position. 

At one point, I doubted that they didn't even cross 120 runs but, they put on 177 runs by the end of the innings. All thanks to Shivam Dube, Rayan Parag and Rahul Tewatia and it's a good come back for the team.

Mohammed Siraj and Harshal Patel took 3 wickets each in this innings and made the RR batsmen sweat blood during their batting

With decent runs to chase, RCB openers Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal opened and finished the innings by not losing a wicket and with 21 balls to spare.

From the beginning, both the players played aggressively and scored more runs than the RR in every over. This made them build such partnership in the game. 

Devdautt Padikkal scored his first century in the IPL. With this century, he is the second batsmen to do a century after Sanju Samson against Punjab Kings.

Rajasthan Royals bowlers weren't able to put pressure on the batsmen, instead, both RCB openers put a lot of pressure on the bowlers.

Overall, the Royal Challengers Bangalore showed their dominance from the begging of the match and able to win it without breaking any sweat and chance to other batsmen.

IPL 2021 RCB vs RR 16th Match Preview

The two teams played three matches till now, Royal Challengers Bangalore won all three matches whereas Rajasthan had won only a match in this season till now.

Today these both teams will play against each other in Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. this is the first match for the Royal Challengers Banglore in Mumbai. The team have travelled for the first time, according to the IPL schedule, every team will travel only three times in this tournament.

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Till now, this team didn't lose a match and at present, they are the table-toppers with three consecutive victories in this tournament. All thanks to the AB de Villiers, Glenn Maxwell, Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikal. If these guys didn't play well those would have been lost too. 

Glenn Maxwell did his first fifty in four years. This team is really helping him to prove himself, which he can't in the last four years. Till now, he scored two half-centuries and helped the team to win the matches.

AB de Villiers is coming to bat in the middle order to re-enforce the team strength in the middle overs. He usually opens with Virat Kohli, this change in the batting lineup really worked in the last three matches. 

Coming to the bowling department, Harshal Patel's five-wicket haul in the first match against the Mumbai Indias is the best thing that happened in that game. Now, he is the most wicket-taker in this season of the IPL. The spinners are also helping the team to pick the wickets when the team needed them the most.  

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Probable Playing 11

1 Virat Kohli (capt), 2 Finn Allen, 3 Devdutt Padikkal, 4 Glenn Maxwell, 5 AB de Villiers (wk), 6 Kyle Jamieson, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Shahbaz Ahmed, 9 Harshal Patel, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Rajasthan Royals

In the three games, they played, they won only a match against the Delhi Capitals. In this match, the bowlers did a really good job by taking the wickets in the early stage of the match and Chris Moriss last over proved that he can hit sixes to win a match.

In the match against the PBKS, the team captain didn't seem to trust Chris Moriss with the last ball but he proved to be useful in the next match. In the match against the Chennai Super Kings, the team lost the match by 45 runs.

The CSK bowlers didn't give any chance to the Rajasthan Royals batsmen to score any runs in that match. If this situation happens again in this match, there is no chance for Rajasthan Royals to win this match.

They need to be extra careful with Harshal Patel, Y Chahal and Shabaz Ahmed and try not to lose any wickets in the powerplay and death overs. If the Rajasthan Royals bat first, they need to score more than 190 runs to stop the current RCB.

If they bowl first, they need to restrict the RCB to less than 170 runs to take a clean and calm victory without any tensions. Chetan Sakariya and Jaydev Unadkat need to take the wickets as early as possible and most importantly the RCB's top-order batsmen.

Rajasthan Royals Squad

Probable Playing 11

1 Jos Buttler, 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal/Manan Vohra, 3 Sanju Samson (capt & wk), 4 Shivam Dube/Shreyas Gopal, 5 David Miller, 6 Riyan Parag, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Chris Morris, 9 Jaydev Unadkat, 10 Chetan Sakariya, 11 Mustafizur Rahman

IPL 2021 KKR vs CSK Match 15

image: BCCI

In the second match of today's doubleheader, Kolkata Knight Riders won the toss and chose to bowl first to stop the CSK batsmen. But their plan failed, Ruthraj Gaikwad did perform well today with the help of the Faf du Plessis.

In 77 balls, the duo scored a whopping second-highest partnership in this season of the Indian Premier League. KKR has waited till Varun Chakravarthy's 13th over to take their first wicket of the match. Rutraj Gaikwakad 64 (42), caught out by Pat Cummins at deep mid-wicket.

Then, Moeen Ali and Faf du Plessis made another 50 runs partnership in 27 balls. In Sunil Naraine's 17th over, when Moeen Ali 25 (12) missed the ball, Dinesh Karthi stumped the wickets and got him out.

Then, Faf du Plessis with help of Dhoni and Jadeja scored an amazing total of 220 runs just by losing 3 wickets in 20 overs.

Kolkata Knight Riders bowlers proved to be costly this night. Only Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine and Andre Russell took a wicket each. Only Varun Chakravathy's economy is under 8 in the bowlers, which is not good and KKR needs to focus a bit on the bowling.

With a high score to chase, Nitish Rana and Shubman Gill opened the innings for Kolkata Knight Riders. They had a very bad start in the powerplay, the team lost half of the wickets in the powerplay.

Starting with Shubman Gill in Deepak Chahar's 1st over, Nitish Rana in D Chahar's 2nd over, Eoin Morgan and Sunil Narine in D Chahar's 5th over, And Rahul Tripathi in L Ngidi's 6th over.

Out of the 5 wickets, Deepak Chahar took 4 wickets in the powerplay. As I mentioned him as the dangerous bowler in the powerplay for CSK in the match preview. He's done what I feard to the KKR.

From then Andre Russell and Dinesh Karthik really revived the match with regular boundaries. The required run rate is coming down while the duo is playing.

They both made  81 runs partnership in 53 balls, which is later broken by Sam Curran in the 12th over. The ball has struck the leg stump and dislodged the bails with blinking red lights. At once, I felt sad to watch Andre Russell walks out of the ground with a heavy heart.

 Then with the help of Pat Cummins, Dinesh Karthik played for a while with regular boundaries. Chennai Super Kings has tightened their fielding to avoid singles. There more dot balls in these middle overs after the match has picked up.

In the 15th over, Ngidi has got Dinesh Karthik for a LBW. Since then, Pat Cummins has done a one-man show in the field. He is the only guy who is able and hitting the boundaries. Especially in Ngidi's 16th over, Pat Cummins hit 5 consecutive boundaries. In that over, he scored 30 runs.

It seemed like, he can win the match for KKR and the equation is still reachable but with his stupid decisions, he sacrificed others and his wickets to CSK fielders. At last Chennai Super Kings won the match by 18 runs and 5 balls left.

IPL 2021 PBKS vs SRH 14th Match report

 

image: BCCI

In the first match of today's doubleheader, Punjab Kings won the toss and elected to bat first in M.A Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal opened the innings for the Punjab Kings.

Punjab Kings started with a slow over and tried to increase the run rate in the 2nd over but, in the Bhuvaneshwar Kumar's 4th over, KL Rahul  4(6) got out by giving a catch to Kedhar Jhadav in the mid-wicket.

After a 24 runs partnership with Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal 22(25) departed in Khaleel Ahmed's 8th over which is caught by Rashid Khan at mid-wicket. In the next ball, Nicholas Pooran 0(0) got runout by David Warner, by not even facing one ball in the match.

At this point, the run rate is hovering at 5.6 runs per over. In the 9th over, Chris Gayle 15(17) departed after an LBW in Rashid Khan's 9th over. 

PBKS total score didn't even cross 50 and lost 4 wickets. This showed the Sunrisers Hyderabad's hunger for a win in this tournament.

Then Hurricane Hooda lost his wicket to Abishek Sharma in the 12th over, after a ball hit his pads before the wicket. Then followed by Moises Henriques wicket in Abishek Sharma's 14th over. A small and good cameo from Sharukhan has led the score to 120 runs after losing all wickets with 2 balls remaining.

A wonderful fielding and bowling from the Sunrisers Hyderabad for a win in this tournament after losing 3 consecutive matches. Khaleel Ahmed and Abishek Sharma really turned the table for SRH with their exceptional bowling.

With a low score to chase, Sunrisers Hyderabad batsmen, Jhonny Bairstow and David Warner played a wonderful knock. They both made a wonderful partnership of 73 runs in 64 balls. Their partnership was broken by Fabian Allen in the 11th over after taking David Warner's 37(37)wicket.

Then Kane Williamson and Jhonny Bairstow started to scored the remaining runs with regular runs between the wicket as the score is less and they didn't want to risk any more wickets. 

Sunrisers Hyderabad, at last, won a match in the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League.

PBKS bowlers didn't show any effect on the Sunrisers Hyderabad's top order, the three batsmen didn't give any chance to the PBKS bowlers.