Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Chennai Super Kings vs Rajasthan Royals - Match Preview

🏏 12 April 2023 - 18:00 GMT +0

Early evidence illustrates that Indian Premier League (IPL) fans could be in for a closely fought season with all ten franchises tasting defeat within the first dozen days of the competition. The Chennai Super Kings and the Rajasthan Royals, who are two of six teams currently on four points from a possible six vying for the top spot, play their fourth match each of the campaign on Wednesday at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. It will be the 27th time they have met in the IPL with the Super Kings holding sway in the H2H register with a 15-11 lead (excluding the Champions League), albeit the Royals have won four of their last five encounters. A return to Chepauk, where they have won six of seven H2H encounters, should assist them in turning the tables.

Four times champions Chennai Super Kings have started to go up through the gears after losing this season’s inaugural match to the Gujarat Titans by five wickets. Since then they have beaten the Lucknow Super Giants by 12 runs before following that up with an emphatic seven-wicket win over Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians. It is early days and head coach Stephen Fleming seems to be yet to find his best eleven, but he has managed to field well-balanced sides in the first three matches. With results going favourably for his side, not everything is rosy in the CSK camp. Whilst they sweat on the results of Deepak Chahar’s hamstring scans, there are also slight concerns about the form of key all-rounder Ben Stokes prior to his ten-day injury layoff. Stokes has looked out of sorts so far, having scored just 15 runs from his two innings and conceded 18 runs off his only over bowled.

The Super Kings’ top-order batters have given their side every chance with some excellent powerplay batting. Here, they have been averaging 66.00 runs per match at a rate of 11.00rpo, helped by scoring an average of three maximums per innings in the first six overs. This is in contrast with their bowling attack who have been expensive in the first six overs conceding on average 69 runs at 11.44rpo. The additional availability of Sri Lankan pair Mahesh Theekshana (spin) and Matheesha Pathirana (colloquially dubbed ‘Baby Malinga’) will offer the selection committee some extra choices, putting extra pressure on South Africans Dwaine Pretorius and Sisanda Magala to deliver.

The first-ever IPL champions (2008) and last year’s losing finalists, Rajasthan Royals, have fared equally as well as the Super Kings so far, having continued their fine form from IPL2022 by beating the Sunrisers Hyderabad by a massive 72 runs in their opening match. In their second match, they found the Punjab Kings’ skipper Shikhar Dhawan (86) in a such rude form that they couldn’t prevent him from helping his side take the points with a five-run victory. Sanju Samson’s men then bounced back to winning ways in their most recent outing with a more than convincing 57-run victory over David Warner’s Delhi Capitals.

Opening stands of 85, 13 and 98 have been key to the Royals’ successes so far with both openers Jos Buttler (152 runs - avg 50.66) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (125 - avg 41.66) already having accrued three-figure tallies after three matches. They have been followed by strong performances with the bat from Shimron Hetmyer who is averaging 97.00 and skipper Samson who brought up his 18th IPL half-century in the game against the Sunrisers. With the ball, strike bowler Trent Boult (5/88) is yet to bowl in conditions conducive to his impeccable swing bowling despite registering double wicket maidens in the opening over of two of their three games. He has been ably accompanied by spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal who have been doing most of the damage with the ball, aggregating figures of 9/171 off their 24 overs bowled (7.56rpo).

⚡ Key battle: One of the world’s best all-rounders in all formats of cricket is Ravindra Jadeja who, along with his 2506 runs at an average of 26.10 has taken 136 wickets at 30.34 apiece. One of those wickets has been that of Jos Buttler who is just 17 runs shy of 3,000 in the IPL from 85 matches (avg 40.31). Buttler’s scalp cost Jadeja 60 runs at a strike rate of 157.89 with 36 of those runs coming in boundaries (2x6, 6x4).

📋 Stat attack: The Chennai Super Kings have won their last eight games at Chepauk when starting as the pre-match favourites.

• Royals’ opener Jos Buttler has produced their top score in ten of their last 20 matches.
• The Super Kings have been averaging 5.67 sixes per innings during the middle overs (7-16) this season compared with the Royals averaging 2.67.
• CSK won seven of their ten home H2H matches when batting second.
• The Royals have gone on to lose 15 of their 23 matches (68.18%) when losing the toss away from home.
• Mitchell Santner has never dismissed Jos Buttler in any format of cricket, conceding 80 runs.
• Jason Holder to Ruturaj Gaikwad in T20s: 2/1 from 4 balls.
• Trent Boult to Ajinkya Rahane in T20s: 3/35 from 36 balls.
• Mitchell Santner to Sanju Samson in T20s: 2/1 from 7 balls.