Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Chennai Super Kings vs Lucknow Super Giants - Match Preview

🏏 3 April 2023 - 18:00 GMT +0

Two franchises that both recorded healthy first innings scores but with vastly different results will meet in what will be the Chennai Super Kings’ first game at their MA Chidambaram Stadium home since losing the first Qualifier to Mumbai in the 2019 season. Chennai was used as a neutral hub during the 2021 season, which may offer to visit Lucknow Super Giants a bit of insight into what to expect in their debut at the beloved ‘Chepauk’. It had become quite the fortress for Chennai before the pandemic, who had not lost to anyone but Mumbai Indians across their last 21 games at the venue (W18, L3)!

Chennai captain MS Dhoni wanted 15-20 runs on top of the 178 they scored when taking defending champions Gujarat Titans to the last moment of the match, but he was made to lament some mistakes along that path. “Batting properly in the middle overs as opposed to trying to muscle the ball” is an improvement that Dhoni wants his side to make immediately, and whilst he was not going to point this out on television, Tushar Deshpande certainly made an “impact” as the Super Kings’ first sub by producing the worst bowling figures (1/51) of the entire match.

It will certainly be fascinating to see how the Super Kings go immediately upon returning to a venue where they enjoy an outstanding 71% win rate, and they should be able to hit the ground running with long-time players such as Dhoni, Ambati Rayudu, Ravindra Jadeja and Deepak Chahar intimately familiar with the venue even after three years away. If Dhoni can get anywhere near his 2019 return at Chepauk - 193 runs from four innings without being dismissed once - he may not need to bat as low as eight as he did in their loss to Gujarat.

Ironically, Chennai fell to a 0-2 record early in the 2022 season after their second match of the campaign saw them fail to defend a score of 210 at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai against Lucknow. Their two highest scorers on that occasion won’t be around this time, but Avesh Khan and Ravi Bishnoi, who claimed two wickets each in that game, repeated the dose in their commanding and booming 50-run win over Delhi Capitals on Saturday.

Even in the unique 2022 season that took place in one city, Lucknow demonstrated that a raucous home crowd cheering against them is of no concern by defeating Mumbai Indians twice in Mumbai on the way to the final. In a very competitive environment for Lucknow’s four foreigner slots, Kyle Mayers did his chances of being retained when Quinton de Kock returns from South Africa no harm with a match-winning 73 on his IPL debut, nor did Mark Wood with the best-ever IPL bowling figures by an Englishman in what was just his second IPL match.

Those are some tremendous signs for the Super Giants when coupled with the experience offered by captain KL Rahul, who has two half-centuries from his four innings in Chennai (average 41.33), whilst Avesh Khan and Bishnoi have seven wickets from their three IPL appearances combined at Chepauk. They had much more success than Chennai did with their Impact Player, with Krishnappa Gowtham the cheapest of the Lucknow bowlers in their win over Delhi except for Mark Wood.

📋 Key battles: Considering the class, skillsets and longevity of these two bowlers, it is almost impossible to believe that Lucknow captain KL Rahul has never been dismissed in a T20 by either Deepak Chahar (0/120 from 75 balls) or Ravindra Jadeja (0/48 from 42)!

⚡ Stat attack: The average first innings score at Chepauk during the 2021 season was 154.

• First innings scores of greater than 175 runs in IPL games in Chennai have an 81% success rate.
• Six of the last eight IPL games in Chennai were lost by the team with the most powerplay runs.
• Ruturaj Gaikwad has top scored for Chennai in four of their last ten innings.
• Avesh Khan has conceded 61 runs from 35 balls to Ambati Rayudu without a wicket, but he has dismissed MS Dhoni twice at an average of 17.00.
• Krunal Pandya has scored more than 25 runs in just one of his last 21 IPL innings.