The stress and intensity of this year’s IPL has been crazy and both these teams would have taken a much-needed breather to have been able to climb to that priced position in the play-offs. Both these teams would need to win three games to lift the trophy and that’s exactly what they would want.
Mumbai’s win had eliminated Rajasthan, but a win for RCB could have ended their stint in this year’s IPL. Mumbai had a terrible start to the IPL, before they caught momentum in the second half of the tournament, from where they just didn’t stop and now with all the momentum, they are certainly considered as the favourites to win
this tournament.
Lucknow had qualified with a win in their last match, but surely, they wouldn’t have wanted RCB to have qualified and to have had that extra motivation to do well.
Lucknow who started the tournament on its prime, had lost their grace mid-way and they just managed to scrape through somehow.
ELIMINATOR – LSG vs MI AT CHENNAI
TEAM INFO – Both these are impact teams and each of these teams have super destructive players, that can change the course of the match within a few overs. Although, both these teams will be clashing a neutral venue, that will ideally suit spin and that’s something that makes the Lucknow Super Giants a slight favourite. But for the benefit of Mumbai, the form of Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma would be a big bliss for Mumbai. Talking about momentum, both the teams have found their peak form off-lately and should bring them in a great mindset into this must win game.
PREVIOUS ENCOUNTER – Both these teams clashed in the 64th match, where Lucknow came out on top by a small margin of just 5 runs. Batting first, Lucknow were in trouble at 35/3 from where Krunal Pandya had a brilliant partnership with Marcus Stoinis, from where Stoinis finished incredibly well to get Lucknow to 177/3. Chasing 178 to win, MI got off to a flyer, where they lost the first wicket at 90. But some excellent fielding later in the innings allowed LSG to win by 5 runs, despite a 19-ball 32 runs by Tim David.
Head-to-Head - Played - 3; Won by LSG – 3; Won by MI – 0
LSG possible 12 – K Sharma, Q de Kock, P Mankad, M Stoinis, N Pooran, K Pandya, A Badoni, K Gowtham, R Bishnoi, N Ul Haq, M Khan, Y Thakur
MI possible 12 – R Sharma, I Kishan, C Green, S Yadav, T David, N Wadhera, C Jordan, P Chawla, J Behrendorff, K Kartikeya, A Madhwal, V Vinod
Pitch & Weather Report – The MA Chidambaram Stadium is the home ground of Chennai Super Kings and it is also called as the unbreachable fortress of CSK. The pitch is ideally trusted to support the spinners and stroke
making becomes tougher as the innings progresses. Although, the small boundaries will provide results to even half of a well-connected short as well.
The temperature is expected to hover between 30 to 38 degrees and as the evening progresses, batting could get easier with dew coming into play. Teams winning the toss could very well chose to bowl first.
Match Prediction – Mumbai are filled with match winners and even if one of the players has a great day, they are capable of making the match one-sided. One player who tops this list is Suryakumar Yadav, who is considered
to be one of the best T20 players in the world. If Mumbai can get off to a good start and then SKY can play deep, that would be an ideal circumstance. LSG, are a brilliant team and they thrive in low scoring games. LSG are mainly filled with small contributing players that can provide exceptional match-changing contributions. Batting had actually weakened, after the injury of KL Rahul, is what many said. Although the experts say that, KL Rahul’s injury has been a blessing in disguise and his presence was only dampening the team, and the results have also shown the same. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that, this is a game for Lucknow to lose and the surface is something that should end the road for Mumbai. So, its going to be ‘Luknawi Kali Gajar ka halwa’ in the dinner.
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