Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Mumbai Indians vs Kolkata Knight Riders - Match Preview

🏏 16 April 2023 - 14:00 GMT +0

Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium will be the setting for match 22 of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) when Mumbai Indians host Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Sunday evening local time. Mumbai Indians picked up their first win of the campaign against Delhi Capitals on Tuesday, whilst KKR were defeated by Sunrisers Hyderabad in a high-scoring contest on Friday.

After heavy defeats to Royal Challengers Bangalore (eight wickets) and Chennai Super Kings (seven wickets), Mumbai Indians went into their battle with Delhi Capitals at the bottom of the table, with both teams searching for their opening victory of the 2023 IPL. Although it was the Mumbai Indians who got over the line, it was a very narrow victory where a flatter throw from Delhi Capitals’ skipper David Warner during the final ball of the game could have forced a Super Over.

After declaring publicly that Mumbai’s improvements needed to start with him, Rohit Sharma took the Player of the Match award on Tuesday with 65 runs from 45 balls at the top of the order. He comes into this game needing only 34 more runs to join Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan and David Warner with 6000+ IPL runs. Suryakumar Yadav’s miserable run of form continued with his fourth duck from his last six innings in all cricket during the defeat to Delhi Capitals. However, he was caught on the fine leg boundary after middling his signature swivel-pull shot and most pundits agree that it should not be long before he starts producing consistent big scores again.

With the ball, there were three wickets each for Australian Jason Behrendorff and experienced leg-spinner Piyush Chawla in the 16th match of this edition. Chawla picked up three of the first five Delhi Capitals’ wickets which, when added to his dismissal of Ajinkya Rahane against Chennai Super Kings in the previous game, means he has taken the wickets of batters only in the top six across the last two matches.

KKR had won successive games against RCB and Gujarat Titans ahead of their defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad in match 19. The win over the Titans has already gone down in IPL folklore after Rinku Singh struck sixes from the final five deliveries of the innings to pull off a chase which had looked out of reach when 29 runs were needed from the final over. Skipper Nitish Rana and Singh both threatened to produce a similar outcome in Friday’s defeat when they took KKR’s total from 96-5 (10.1) to 165-6 (16.3) chasing 229 for the win. The pair have now contributed a combined 226 runs (14x fours, 19x sixes) across the last two games with Singh finishing unbeaten in both.

However, for all of KKR’s batting heroics against Gujarat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad, their bowlers have leaked 432 runs and taken only eight wickets in those matches combined. The opening bowling pair of Umesh Yadav and Lockie Ferguson have both gone wicketless in the two games with Ferguson conceding 77 runs from his six overs alone! This will be the 32nd contest between Mumbai Indians and KKR with the head-to-head score 22-9 in Mumbai’s favour. However, it is KKR who come into this clash looking to make it four wins on the bounce against Mumbai. It will be a hot evening in Mumbai with the forecast for the temperature to be over 30 degrees throughout.

Players to watch: Left-handed batter Tilak Varma hit two half-centuries in his debut IPL season last year but has already taken his batting to a much higher level in 2023. His strike rate was at 131.02 in 2022 but is up at 158.06 this year and he hit his highest IPL score of 84 not out from 46 balls in the win over RCB in Match 5.

⚡ After coming to the crease to face a hat-trick ball with his team on 22-3 chasing 229 to win, Nitish Rana produced brilliant innings of 75 runs from 41 balls to give KKR a chance against Sunrisers Hyderabad. Thrust into the captaincy after Shreyas Iyer was ruled out of the tournament, Rana has hit 145 runs so far at a strike rate of 157.61 - his best across his eight seasons of the IPL.

📋 Stat attack: KKR have scored 200+ three times in IPL 2023 (10.03rpo).

• Mumbai’s bowlers during the powerplay in IPL 2023: 172/2 at 9.56 runs per over.
• Kolkata have conceded the highest opening partnership of each of their last six games and are also yet to post the most sixes of a game in 2023.
• Umesh Yadav to Suryakumar Yadav in T20s: 2/21 from 11 balls.
• Lockie Ferguson to Rohit Sharma in T20s: 0/67 from 31 balls.
• Sunil Narine to Rohit Sharma in IPL: 137/7 at 6.47rpo.
• 65% of Rinku Singh’s boundaries during IPL 2023 have been sixes.

Gujarat Titans vs Rajasthan Royals - Match Preview

🏏 16 April 2023 - 18:00 GMT +0

Two powerhouse sides of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) are set to go head to head in what could become a battle for the top spot on the table when last season's winners Gujarat Titans take on the 2023 favourites Rajasthan Royals. These sides played each other three times last season, with Gujarat getting the win on all three occasions including in the low scoring final at Ahmedabad, the venue also playing host to this match.

Gujarat may only be three matches into the season but already the starting eleven looks set as does the Impact Player plan, even if Hardik Pandya never seems to remember his team at the toss. Everything is going well for Gujarat who is losing the fewest number of wickets per innings (4.25) of all teams, while also taking the second most wickets per innings with an average of 7.50. Of course, when Rashid Khan is taking hat tricks, that does help inflate the numbers! Perhaps the only thing for the Titans to look at is their scoring rate which currently sits sixth in the competition at 9.09rpo with an average of just 5.25 sixes per innings being scored by the defending champions.

So far in 2023, Gujarat have loved to take things down to the wire! Their wins were secured with four balls left, 11 balls left, and then the final ball loss to Kolkata before their most recent win against Punjab, a chase with just one ball remaining. While the close wins provide for great entertainment, the batters should be looking to go harder. Namely, Shubman Gill took 49 balls to get to 67 against Punjab, but the biggest issues were Sai Sudharsan and David Miller who both scored at less than a run a ball in the chase. That should be less of an issue at Narendra Modi Stadium though, a ground that has already seen first innings scores of 178 and 204 in this IPL.

In comparison with Gujarat, the Sanju Samson-led Royals have been scoring at a lightning pace, averaging 192.25 runs while losing a relatively similar six wickets per match. Much of that quick scoring is down to Jos Buttler who has brought his 2022 form into 2023 with 204 runs from his first four matches at a commanding strike rate of 170. 114 of those runs have been added during the powerplay at 11.79rpo. That kind of form seems to be infectious with his opening partner Yashasvi Jaiswal scoring an almost 12rpo following a knock of 60 from 31 against Delhi just over a week ago.

The only slip-up from the table-topping Royals so far was a five-run loss to Punjab in match eight of the tournament. It was a game the Royals lost only due to Punjab somehow getting on top of Yuzvendra Chahal (1/50), indeed a rare occasion with very few teams able to get onto the spinner. Since that game, Rajasthan has decided to bring in a sixth bowling option, allowing them to mix things up when required. One bad performance certainly hasn't affected Chahal either with him taking five wickets in his last two matches as a comeback.

⚡ Key battle: The criticism of Shubman Gill scoring slowly may reflect only one inning but he will need to work hard to score quickly against Rajasthan and particularly Trent Boult. The Kiwi left-armer has bowled 40 balls to him in the IPL previously while only going for 39 runs and dismissing him on one occasion. The tactic from Gill could be to counterattack or to just see Boult off and get stuck into the heavy spin attack of Rajasthan.

📋 Stat attack: In the three matches between these sides Jos Buttler registered scores of 89, 54 and 39.

• Both Rajasthan Royals openers are scoring at more than 11rpo in the powerplay this season.
• In the IPL Hardik Pandya scores at just 6.90rpo against right arm leg spin.
• David Miller has 131 runs at 11.04rpo in the three matches Gujrat have played against Rajasthan.
• The average powerplay score at Narendra Modi Stadium in this IPL is 53, the same as the overall IPL 2023 average score going into the weekend.
• Trent Boult has four powerplay wickets in this tournament but is miraculously going at just 4.85rpo during that period.
• Gujarat is averaging ten more runs than Rajasthan when batting first in this tournament - 202 runs compared with 192 runs.
• Rashid Khan to Shimron Hetmyer in T20s - 50 balls, 64 runs, four dismissals.