 The 38th game of the IPL will see the Rajasthan Royals take on the Kings XI Punjab at Jaipur. The Royals have eight points from as many games whereas
the Punjab team is almost of contention with only two wins from nine games.
Click for Live Score Card of Jaipur Rajasthan Royals Vs Mohali Punjab KingsPunjab will go into the match with some sort of a confidence. After all, they
had run two oppositions close in the previous couple of games before their match
against Kolkata. Against Kolkata, their bowlers had held a firm leash on the
batsmen before Chris Gayle cut loose and smashed four sixes and got the
score to 200 in the 20 overs. However, undeterred by this, the side chased the
total down thanks to a smashing century by Mahela Jayawardene, who went up to
win the man of the match award and say that he loves to open the innings.
With another win behind them, and a comprehensive one before that, the Punjab
side will know that if they could try and win a couple of such games, they could
even end up creating a minor flutter in the points table. This will include
the game against the Rajasthan Royals, who are battling hard against the likes
of Bangalore, Chennai and Deccan to get through to the semi-finals.
Punjab, however, will need to look at their bowling attack. One tends to feel
that they have bowled well below par, and the likes of S Sreesanth and Brett Lee need to pull up their socks much more than what they have so far. Both
these bowlers have been hit for a lot of runs because of their excessive pace
but lack of direction and that will need to change for this game.
Rajasthan will be a bolstered side. And a relatively happy one despite losing
the match against the Chennai for the way in which they fought against the Super
Kings. The return of Shane Watson will be a huge bonus for the team as his all-round
skills would, undoubtedly make it easier for the side to go in with the right
balance. One also feels that Warne will now stop experimenting with the likes
of Sumit Narwal and Amit Uniyal and instead allow Siddharth Triwedi to
get back into the side for the rest of the games.
Yusuf Pathan was unlucky to miss out in the previous game against Chennai when
Doug Bollinger took hold of a superb catch and my sense is that he will
be the man to watch out for.
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