6 games and 1 win – this is what Delhi Daredevils have in IPL 2018 so far, and honestly, we didn’t expect much better from the team. They’ve chopped and changed their teams a lot and in general, haven’t played good cricket. Now the last game drew a lot of positives like Shreyas Iyer’s mature knock, Avesh Khan’s raw pace, Liam Plunkett hitting the deck hard and Prithvi Shaw’s willingness to go for the shots at the top. The problem here? They’re up against a strong Kolkata Knight Riders.
Kolkata possess one of the strongest and most balanced teams in the Indian Premier League but they have had a slight issue in closing up matches and that’s why they haven’t got the best results either, with 3 wins and 3 losses so far. On paper, KKR win any day, but Delhi would be high on confidence after those small positives they gained from the loss against KXIP.
Teams
Firstly, big news in for Delhi Daredevils – Gautam Gambhir has stepped down from the captaincy and Shreyas Iyer will now take over. Secondly, Gambhir has announced that he will forego salary and play the rest of the season for FREE. Not sure what’s happening but something tells me alls not okay in the Delhi camp. However, I am looking forward to Iyer’s captaincy.
Now the Indian Premier League has always been so unpredictable and has been about teams gelling well doing better, rather than those whose team combinations have not been sorted out. Delhi have faced this issue this year. KKR will be looking to exploit Jason Roy’s vulnerability to leg-spin by introducing Piyush Chawla early in the innings.
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The middle order in Nitish Rana, Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik have been performing brilliantly, while Andre Russell has been there to clear the ropes towards the back end. A recent 74(41) from Chris Lynn marks his return to form and suddenly, KKR will have a lot of more confidence in Lynn for the rest of IPL 2018. They have persisted with Tom Curran over the experienced Mitch Johnson, so I am expecting no change in the KKR line up.
Overall
The spinners will play a vital role in this game and with 12 overs from Chawla, Narine and Kuldeep, KKR look much stronger. From Delhi, I would suggest picking Rahul Tewatia in your fantasy league teams. The fellow quietly picks up wickets, hasn’t gone for many runs and also gives the ball a slog. I however, will be backing Kolkata Knight Riders for the win.
