I’m about to offer you the best tips for IPL betting ahead of Wednesday’s big match at the Wankhede Stadium. There’s the latest GT vs SRH betting tips as well as the all-important online cricket betting opportunities ahead of the game.
The match starts on Wednesday, April 27 at 7.30 pm IST and is an important one with both teams going extremely well and not wanting to pass on the chance to go top of the table.
This is pretty much a 50/50 game in our opinion so with SRH the slight outsiders with the slightly better batting line-up, they’re our IPL selection for today.
I’ll also have my usual toss winner pick and the GT vs SRH betting odds for my Hot Bet: a third tip at bigger odds than usual.
I’m going for SRH’s unheralded opener Sharma to outscore his team-mates at very attractive odds.
Gujarat are 1.8 with Hyderabad 2.0. Does that sound right?
Well the Titans are of course top of the table and we’ve said below how much we respect their bowling line-up, who can do the lot. But as we explain in detail in the preview, we’re unconvinced about their batting.
SRH are a different beast.
Like Gujarat, we love their bowling and they’re perfectly suited to chasing par scores but we have a few doubts as to whether they can set or chase monster totals. And given they’ve won all five chasing, we have doubts as to whether they can win games batting first.
So neither side is perfect but SRH just about get the vote. Firstly because they have the better batting, secondly because they shouldn’t be outsiders.
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Plus of course, all the latest GT vs SRH betting markets and odds.
If you had to pick the best SRH batsman, it probably wouldn’t be Abhishek Sharma that you’d pick.
Any one of Williamson, Pooran, Markram and even Tripathi arguably have better credentials and CVs than Sharma.
But all that is missing the point. As you’ll know from our top batsman guide, being an opener is a massive advantage and gives you the best shot at being top runscorer.
So when that man is also the team’s top runscorer this season and is only the fifth-favourite to be SRH top bat at 6.17, you know you’re onto a good thing.
He may not win but the rationale behind siding with him is certainly correct.
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Six wins from seven games is a good return in any form of T20 cricket.
But when you consider that this is the IPL, cricket’s most competitive T20 league and that Gujarat are a brand new team up against some sides in their fifteenth season as an IPL team, it’s even more impressive.
So how have they done it? Well, we always knew their bowling was very sharp with that trio of Rashid Khan/Lockie Ferguson/Mohammed Shami as good as anything anyone else has.
It was their batting which was always going to be the concern but they’ve found a way, time and time again.
More often than not, and more often than they would have liked, it’s been skipper Hardik Pandya finding the way.
He’s got to 50 in each of his last three innings, two of those not outs, and he top-scored in all three of them. The worry is therefore that if he fails, and he will eventually, someone else will have to play a big innings.
The question is who? Because Shubman Gill, David Miller and Matthew Wade have all looked out of sorts.
But if the manner of their wins is questionable, their number of wins isn’t.
Their latest victims were KKR on Saturday, failing to chase a manageable target after Gujarat took early wickets and then kept on taking them.
As ever, the bowlers bailed them out.
Team News
An injury to Pandya a couple of games ago forced a re-think and the solution was to drop specialist keeper/batsman Matthew Wade, bring in W Saha as his replacement and then bring in Alzarri Joseph into the fourth overseas spot to further strengthen the bowling.
As if it needed to be strengthened!
But there was a method in the madness because it’s allowed Ferguson and Khan to bowl towards the end of the innings, which can only be a good thing for Gujarat.
Pandya is back now but he didn’t bowl in that last match, a sign he’s struggling with injury again, though it’s also true that if their five frontline bowlers are all bowling well, they don’t actually need Pandya with the ball.
So they sort of stumbled across their best combination but they’ll probably stick with it now.
Player to Watch: Lockie Ferguson
We’ve seen how raw pace is going to be a priceless asset in this year’s IPL by looking at how well Umran Malik of SRH has been going.
Malik is probably the fastest bowler in the competition but Ferguson is right up there, too.
The difference between the two is that Malik steams in and just bowls straight while Ferguson, almost 10 years older than Malik, can also add variations in line and length. He can even bowl the occasional slower ball as well, rather than just bowl with outright speed.
The result is that you never know what you’re going to get from Ferguson.
And that’s one reason why his IPL record is excellent. This is his fifth season in the IPL and he’s taken 33 wickets in 29 matches. In only one season did he go for more than 8.3 an over so his economy rate is impressive, as well.
Ferguson is on nine wickets from seven games this campaign and the 3.75 joint-favourite with Betway, alongside Khan and Shami, to be their top bowler against SRH.
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That SRH recovered from two early losses and won their next five is a remarkable effort.
They looked lost, low on confidence and out of their depth in those first two matches.
But back they came, their bowlers playing beautifully (including that man Malik) and giving SRH’s batters a pretty easy task in the chase.
But therein lies a possible problem.
Kane Williamson has remarkably won all seven tosses so far and though deciding to chase in their first two games ended in defeat, all of those next five wins were batting second. So we’ll have to wait and see if they can do it when the shoe is on the other foot.
Their win on Saturday was typical of SRH. An excellent effort in restricting RCB’s good batting line-up was followed by a clinical chase once again.
This time round it was South African youngster Marco Jansen, rather than Indian youngster Malik, doing the damage with the ball.
Jansen dismissed all of Bangalore’s top three, including Virat Kohli for a golden duck, to pick up the man-of-the-match award.
Team News
Washington Sundar missed the last three games with injury and as it happens, wasn’t badly missed.
But they’re a better team with him in it because he’s a proper three-dimensional player who bats, bowls and fields.
Let’s not forget he regularly features for India in all three formats.
Jagadeesha Suchith has done a good job filling in for Sundar, including a fine effort of 2/12 in the last game, but will have to step aside if Sundar is deemed fit.
With all four overseas players going well, the likes of Romario Shepherd and Sean Abbott will have to wait for their turn.
Player to Watch: T Natarajan
If Malik is all out and out pace and Bhuvi Kumar is a genius at working out different ways of getting batsmen out, then T Nataraj is the specialist death bowler.
Bowling in the death overs is an art and he’s better at it than most with yorkers, slower balls and cutters thrown in there. India may well consider picking him to be their death bowler alongside Jasprit Bumrah when the next World Cup comes along.
This season he’s already taken 15 wickets in just seven games with only Yuzvendra Chahal ahead of him, on 18.
And he’s going at just eight an over, also impressive given this is when most bowlers leak runs.
It’s 15.0 he’s man of the match in this game and 2.1 to take two or more wickets. Odds with Betway.
