MATCH: Mumbai Indians v Trinidad and Tobago
DATE: Sunday, September 26, 2011
TIME: 2000 hours IST (1430 hours GMT)
VENUE: M Chinnaswamy, Bangalore
With a win under their belt, a depleted but a confident Mumbai Indians side takes on the Trinidad and Tobago in the sixth game of the Champions League T20 this year.
Past Record:
The Mumbai Indians had gone into their first game of the tournament against the defending champions and the rather powerful Chennai Super Kings. For about 80% of the match, they did not do anything to suggest that they even had an outside chance of winning the game. And then, Lasith Malinga produced half the runs that he has in his entire T20 career in that single innings to win them the game.
Trinidad and Tobago will be playing their first game in the main draw of the competition after having qualified for the tournament through the playoffs. They had beaten the Ruhuna Rhinos and the Leicestershire Foxes to get here.
Side-effect:
Going into the tournament, the Mumbai Indians (8/15 at
Boylesports) were clearly the weakest side on paper given their absences. With a win against Chennai, their confidence would be sky-high and if they can put it across Trinidad and Tobago, they will suddenly find themselves in a situation where a semi-finals berth isn’t too far.
Trinidad and Tobago (7/4 at
bet365), on the other hand, will want to make it three in a row in the tournament. In the two editions of the CLT20 that they have played so far, they have won seven of the eight games and another win here will make it eight wins out of nine – a whopping strike-rate when it comes to this format of the game.
Team News:
The Mumbai Indians may look to go with some more beef in the pace bowling attack given the nature of the Bangalore pitch. Especially those who can get the ball to change its pace and direction. Unfortunately for the Mumbai Indians, Andrew Symonds hasn’t yet got going with the ball in the hand and it may not be a bad idea to get in James Franklin in the middle.
The batting may remain the same but to send in Ambati Rayadu at four and Kieron Pollard at six is blasphemy. The captain, Harbhajan Singh would do well to send in their best batsmen at the top, especially given the way Rayadu has batted as an opener.
Trinidad and Tobago have often relied on their slow bowlers to push the batsmen on to the back-foot but the tactic has been helped a lot so far by the pitch at Hyderabad. In Bangalore, they may have to look beyond Samuel Badree and Sunil Narine to get them the early breakthrough and it may not be a bad idea for them to open with a quicker bowler.
Who is hot?
Mumbai Indians will look at Aiden Blizzard (4/1 at
Coral) and Davy Jacobs (4/1 at
Blue Square) to give them a flying start on the flat track while Trinidad and Tobago will expect something similar from Lendl Simmons (7/2 at
Blue Square) and Adrian Barath (4/1 at
SkyBet).
Prediction:
Trinidad and Tobago have a good, all-round side to go the distance in the tournament and they will be favourites to beat the Mumbai Indians.
