"Delhi at 1.715/7 look too short to me in these circumstances. Home advantage is no advantage if you’ve never played there either! The flip side of that is that at 2.3411/8 Pune are too generously priced, so represent the value bet"
The bottom two sides in the Indian Premier League meet, but that doesn't mean that there is no value to be had in the market on this game. Richard O'Hagan explains...
Delhi Daredevils v Pune Warriors India
Sunday 28 April, 15:30 BST
Live on ITV4 and itv.com
Delhi Daredevils
The question on everyone's lips this year has been 'Where did it all go wrong for Delhi?'. In reality, though, that question ought to be more along the lines of 'When is it ever likely to go right for Delhi?'. At the halfway stage of IPL 2013 they are rooted at the foot of the table with just one win from their eight games. They don't have a batsman in the top ten runscorers or a bowler who averages more than one wicket per game. Only three batsmen have passed fifty in the competition so far, only tailender Morne Morkel has a strike rate of over 150.00 and Umukt Chand, touted as the best young batsman in India, has an average of 7.66. It is easy to see why Delhi languish at the foot of the table but hard to see what they can do to redress the balance over the second half of the competition. Delhi have shuffled and shuffled their line up like an amnesiac croupier this season, but to no avail. There's a good chance that they'll give a second outing to Ben Rohrer, who was one of the standouts of this year's Big Bash in Australia.
Pune Warriors India
With Pune, the question is almost the opposite, not so much a case of 'When is this team going to start winning?' as 'How on earth has this team managed to win two games?'. Make no mistake about it, Pune are a shambles. They've not only dropped their captain, they've dropped his original replacement as well. In their last game they were flayed by Bangalore, who ran up a record score for any T20 game on the back of Chris Gayle's T20 record score of 175*. They were dealt a huge blow this week when Marlon Samuels became their second overseas player to drop out of the competition due to injury (Australian captain Michael Clarke being the first) and although he has only been fit enough to play two games anyway the psychological blow to an already struggling team is impossible to overlook. This might now be the moment for them to introduce two other overseas players who haven't seen action so far. New Zealander Kane Williamson would introduce some steel at the top of the batting order, whist South African left armer Wayne Parnell offers options with both bat and ball. Either would be preferable to Mitchell Marsh, who has struggled so badly this year that it is amazing that only people in Pune cannot see it.
Venue and Conditions
This will be the first game that Delhi have played in the International Cricket Stadium in Raipur, so there is no past history to go on other than that scoring does tend to be hard at newer venues, no matter where in the world they are. Temperatures could be as high as 43 degrees during the day, but a drop of over 20 degrees is not unheard of in the evening here. That sort of drop can lead to a heavy dew, which usually favours the team bowling second if they can keep the ball dry enough.
Match Odds
Deciding between these two is a bit like the famous Samuel Johnson saying about lice and fleas. Picking between two bad teams at a new venue is tricky. Delhi at 1.715/7 look too short to me in these circumstances. Home advantage is no advantage if you've never played there either! The flip side of that is that at 2.3411/8 Pune are too generously priced, so represent the value bet.
Top Delhi Batsman
David Warner is Delhi's leading batsman in this year's IPL with 222 runs. Virender Sehwag, in turn, has a fearsome reputation but age has diminished him. Both of these two will be short odds just on name alone. The man to look for as a value bet, therefore, is captain Mahela Jayawardene. He's made 197 runs this year - good enough for 15th overall - without really standing out and he's under added pressure this time out because he is now the only overseas captain of a side not to have dropped themselves. That is just the kind of thing he thrives upon, though, and the presence of those two big hitters at the top of the order mean that you should be able to back him at around 4.67/2.
Top Pune Batsman
Picking a top Pune batsman is actually a lot easier, because only Aarom Finch has been in any sort of batting form for them. There have been odd flashes from the likes of Robin Uthappa, Steve Smith and even Luke Wright, but on consistency alone Finch is the best bet here, even at only 4.03/1.
Recommended Bet
Back Pune Warriors India at 2.3411/8 to win
There are no comments on this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment