Three games and two wins is what Chennai Super Kings have so far in IPL 2018, while Rajasthan Royals have two wins from four games. The match will be played at a neutral venue, after CSK shifted their home ground to MCA Stadium in Pune and will have to adopt this as their home ground for the rest of the season. Both teams will be coming into this game having lost their last respective matches and both will be looking to bounce back.
Teams
Let’s just say that the Chennai Super Kings are a hurt team at the moment, with Faf du Plessis not played a single game as yet due to an injury, Kedar Jadhav being ruled out of the tournament with a injury and Suresh Raina out for at least 2 games with a calf injury. If nothing else, their middle order has been hit. But MSD promoted himself to #5 in the last game and showed that CSK aren’t much affected, after almost taking them home against KXIP. Will MSD be fit after injuring himself in the last game? Dhruv Shorey is the possible replacement.
Rajasthan Royals have looked a good outfit so far, but a few team combination changes need to be made before they get to winning ways. D’Arcy Short was given an extended run and scored a painstaking 44(43) in the last game, after three failures. Is that good enough to keep him in the squad when overseas players like Heinrich Klaasen and Jofra Archer are sitting out on the bench? An obvious weakness was spotted against Short, and we can expect the spinners to come at him early in the powerplay.
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Another problem I have with the RR team is that they have been batting Rahul Tripathi very low down the order in IPL 2018, which hasn’t allowed him to play with his potential. One major positive I saw in the last game is that Ben Stokes seemed to have arrived emotionally to the IPL. He scored only 14 and didn’t take a wicket but the fire to contribute to his team was visible on his face in the last game. He took a brilliant outfield catch and he will be my fantasy league captain for this game!
Overall
Stokes will be a major positive but there are still plenty of issues in the RR camp and I feel they won’t be able to go too far into this tournament if they don’t plug these issues early on. CSK haven’t lost two consecutive games too many times in the history of the Indian Premier League and I will have my money on Chennai Super Kings for this game!
