The Match:
The 19th game of the Indian Premier League this season will be played between the Delhi Daredevils and the Deccan Chargers. The match will be played at the Feroz Shah Kotla which is the home ground for the Daredevils. >
How the two teams match up:
The two have not had the best of the starts in the tournament. The Daredevils scraped through to their first win of the tournament in the last game when they beat Pune Warriors in Navi Mumbai, but before that they had lost to Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians. What made it worse was that they were convincing losses. >
On the other hand, the Deccan Chargers were beaten in two successive games as well. They went down to the Rajasthan Royals in the first game before being beaten by the Kolkata Knight Riders. They pulled one back when they beat the Royal Challengers Bangalore but were back to their losing-self when the side went down to the Kings XI Punjab. That makes it one win in four games; a record with which they can hardly afford another loss.
Ground Conditions: The match will be played in Delhi. The track here will be slow and low and will make stroke-play difficult. The spin bowlers will have a say in the games but the point is that the Daredevils do not have too many in their ranks.
The Teams: After winning two successive games, it may not make sense for the Daredevils to change a winning combination around. However, what is interesting to see is that the game was won without the towering presence of Morne Morkel – someone who had missed the game due to a stomach bug.
This means that if Morkel is fit, the captain Sehwag will still want him to get back to the side, which could mean that James Hopes may need to sit out. Aaron Finch’s dropping down in the order made sense and the side will look to continue with a similar line-up.
The Deccan Chargers will need some rethinking to be done. They had gone in Manpreet Gony in the line up but he went for too many runs and will be short on confidence. However, he had also had an excellent previous match where he took three wickets against the Royal Challengers. With the pitch expected to play it will, Pragyan Ojha may just be a better choice.
Players to look out for: The Delhi Daredevils will need someone in the middle order to get going – after the opening batsmen have been sent back. Venugopal Rao deserves a promotion to number three position. Deccan will need Kumar Sangakkara to get going.
Prediction: Delhi look favourites again, to win this one.