The Delhi Capitals and The Chennie Superkings will lock horns at 3pm today (UK time) at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium for a place in the IPL final on Friday.
The Superkings are coming into the contest off the back of consecutive defeats. Of particular worry to them will be the form of legendary skipper MS Dhoni. The veteran keeper batsman, whose career has been declining for some time now, struggled to a 27 ball 19 in the lest encounter.
This was preceded by a number of knocks where his strike rate was similarly poor. The quality of Dhoni’s captaincy arguably outweighs for his poor form with the bat due to the performances of the other 10 players but it is nonetheless a concern for Chennie.
They do however boast a strong lineup with their top 3 in particular hitting great heights in the tournament up until this point.
As far as the Capitals are concerned, a record of 10 wins from 14 matches has put them handsomely at the top of the league table. With Anrich Tortje and KG Rabada spearheading the bowling attack and Aksar Patel and R Ashwin stifling the opposition in the middle overs, the Delhi outfit have almost every box ticked in this regard.
The core of their batting comes in the form of local talent. Shikar Dawan, Pritvi Shaw, Rishabh Pant and Shries Ayer are all establish players in the competition and are all capped by India, in some cases on multiple occasions. With this foundation to go off and the strength of the aforementioned bowling attack, Delhi probably go into this match as marginal favourites.
There is extra incentive for teams to finish in the top two of this competition due to the innovative format introduced a few years ago. Whilst the winner goes straight into the final, the loser will have a second bite of the cherry. They will come up against the winner of the match between the 3rd and 4th placed teams in the table so whilst there is plenty riding on this game, all is not lost for whoever team loses on Sunday.