Delhi Daredevils (DD) start theirAcampaign at home taking on Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) at the Feroz Shah Kotla.
Daredevils’ huge win over Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) acted asAa warning to the rival teams; including their immediateAopponents, whose unbeaten run in IPL 10 has just come to a screeching halt.
While DD go into the match at the back of a 97-run thrashing of RPS in the previous match; KXIP suffered their first loss of the tournament, losing to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by 8 wickets.
After a 15-run loss in the first game of the tournament against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB); DD put up a much improved batting show in the second match against RPS to post 205 for 4. They won the game thanks to a magnificent ton from Sanju Samson a the first of IPL 2017.
Daredevils boast a strong battling line-up, which is fullAof all-rounders and will fancy their chances against PunjabAbowlers, who did a decent job before being hammered around by the KKR batsmen.
But the openers have struggled to provide a solid startAand it will be interesting to see if they persist with Tare orAchange the combination at the top. It seems Billings will continue in the opener’s role.
Despite not having many specialist batsmen, Daredevils’Astrength is their young batting line-up even as skipper ZaheerAKhan and spinner Amit Mishra have done reasonably well earlyAinto the tournament, and they would expect others to chip in.
Kings XI Punjab must be disappointed with their performance against Kolkata Knight Riders on Thursday night. At one stage in the innings they looked good to post a total around 200, but eventually ended up with 170.
KXIP obviously prefer chasing; they have a hundred percent record in run-chases this season. It will be interesting to see what Glenn Maxwell will do if he calls correctly at the coin toss.
Punjab bowlers have a job at hand, specially after KKRAexposed their weaknesses at the Eden Gardens. The Punjab bowlers managed to restrict RPS and RCB underA165, but KKR skipper Gambhir and surprise opener Sunil NarineAtook them to the cleaners with remarkable ease.
It’s still early days in the league and the two teams canAstill experiment with their combinations. However, not winningAmany games can affect their play-offs chances later on.
Head to Head :
Matches -A18
Delhi Daredevils – 8, Kings XI Punjab – 10
Predicted Lineups:
Delhi Daredevils:
Shreyas Iyer; Sam Billings; Karun Nair; Sanju Samson; Rishabh Pant (wk); Chris Morris; Corey Anderson; Pat Cummins; Shahbaz Nadeem; Amit Mishra; Zaheer Khan (c).
Kings XI Punjab:
Hashim Amla; Manan Vohra; Glenn Maxwell (c); Wriddhiman Saha (wk); Akshar Patel; David Miller; Marcus Stoinis; Swapnil Singh; Sandeep Sharma; MohitASharma; Varun Aaron.
