Home advantage gives Mumbai Indians the edge

It would only be fair to say that the four best sides entered the IPL playoffs, although the Kolkata Knight Riders would be feeling a tad hard done by that last over against the Mumbai Indians. That loss meant that they will now need to beat the Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium to get into the Champions League T20, something that would have been assured had they won on Sunday.

The stakes rise dramatically for this game. The losing team will be knocked out of the competition and unfortunately for the Knight Riders, the game will be played at Wankhede, a home match for the Mumbai Indians.

That will be a home advantage that the Mumbai Indians could do with, especially with the kind of form that they have displayed in the last four matches. They lost three and were going down for all money in the fourth as well before the resurrection came about.

Sachin has not showed why he is 'the master'

The Wankhede pitch makes for an interesting read. On April 2, in the final of the World Cup, it had allowed the Indians to chase down more than 270 but almost a couple of months on, the pitch seems to have tired out. With the juice from the pitch gone, the slower bowlers have come into their own on such a track and the stroke-makers have found it difficult to get going. This is where the Kolkata Knight Riders would have probably offset the disadvantage of playing away from home - they have the likes of Iqbal Abdulla, Shakib Al Hasan and Yusuf Pathan to exploit these conditions, while Mumbai hasn't had too much support for Harbhajan Singh.

Mumbai Indians did try out Ray Price in the previous game but it is difficult for a bowler to come in and start hitting his straps in the very first game in the sub-continent. To add to that, the Mumbai Indians had to shorten their batting line-up to accommodate Price, having had to discard Andrew Symonds. The absence of an all-rounder in the middle-order has hurt the Mumbai Indians to an extent and it will be a toss-up between a bowler and a batsman for that middle-order spot.

Mumbai Indians have also tried many openers with Sachin Tendulkar but not too much seems to have gone their way.

This seems to have resulted in Tendulkar having to take the responsibility of batting through the innings on himself. He has also had to cope with the fall of an early wicket or two and a slow start. Whoever opens with Tendulkar will need to bat through the Powerplay overs and score the runs at a fair clip to allow the latter order to get going.

A heady cocktail of skill, nerve and luck

Balaji was unfortunate to be hit for those 23 runs in that fateful last over because I still think that he is a thinking bowler and can do a good job towards the end of the innings. Kolkata would love to have Jacques Kallis bowl as well as it gives them an extra option but the presence of Ryan ten Doeschate should help getting rid of some of the bowling workload.

Even a betting man would find it difficult to put his money on one or the other team in this game but I would say that the Mumbai Indians have their noses slightly in front going into the game.

Professional Management Group