Pepsi IPL 7 has reached its final phase and every game has got a huge amount of importance now. We have a double header today and the first match is to be held between Rajasthan Royals Vs. Mumbai Indians at the Sardar Patel Stadium, Motera, Ahmedabad. Let us have a look at both the teams and their standings prior to the game.

Rajasthan Royals (RR)

Rajasthan Royals has impressed everyone by their performance in this year’s IPL. Especially the brilliant performances of their uncapped players under the lights of Sanju Samson, Karun Nair, Rajat Bhatia and Pravin Tambe have contributed much to the success of their team.

Rajasthan Royals presently stand 3^rd in the league table with 14 points in 10 matches with a net run rate of +0.480. They are in a good position to reach the play-offs and will surely try to confirm their place in the play-offs by winning tomorrow’s encounter. Rajasthan Royals won their previous match against the Delhi Daredevils by a mammoth margin of 66 runs.

The pitch of Ahmedabad seemed to be in favour of the batting side as more than 200 runs were scored by RR in their previous match here. RR does possess one of the solid opening pairs of IPL with Ajinkya Rahane and Karun Nair opening the innings for them. The middle order of the line up is empowered by Sanju Samson, Stuart Binny, Shane Watson and obviously there are the lights of Steve Smith and James Faulkner in the lower middle order of the line up to play match winning cameos. RR has depth in their line up which has been proved from their successful chases. They chased down 65 runs in the last 17 deliveries against RCB a few matches ago.

When the matter comes to bowling, RR has the most successful bowling attack in this year’s IPL. There has been two hat-tricks in this year’s IPL and each of them has been taken by a RR bowler, one being Pravin Tambe and Shane Watson being the other. Also, the medium pace of Rajat Bhatia has helped RR’s cause to a considerable extent.

With the kind of line up, RR possess, they will surely be ahead of MI and are no doubt the stronger side.

Mumbai Indians(MI)

The defending champions are literally out of the tournament. Although, on paper they still have some chances to qualify but practically speaking, they are out of the tournament and do not have any chance to qualify unless there are a bunch of unexpected things happening in the league table.

At Present, Mumbai Indians stand in the 7^th position of the league table with 6 points from 10 matches and their net run rate is -0.369. This means that even if they win each of their 4 upcoming matches, they will reach to 14 points which is clearly not enough to qualify for the play-offs.

They have found a bit of stability in their opening combination by the inclusion of Lendl Simmons in the squad. Lendl Simmons and CM Gautam played some good knocks in their previous matches. But in the middle order, no one is in form except Ambati Rayudu. Rohit Sharma and Keiron Pollard did manage to play some good knocks but they lack consistency. Also, we are yet to see a blistering knock from Corey Anderson at the lower middle order.

The bowling attack also seems to be out of touch. Malinga is running out of form and he is struggling to deliver his deadly Yorkers. Pragyan Ojha has been expensive throughout the tournament. The bowling attack suffered a setback after Zaheer Khan has been ruled out of the tournament due to an injury. Harbhajan Singh is the only in-form bowler for them.

MI has to come up strongly and put up their best in order to give a fight to RR.

Teams

Rajasthan Royals

1 Karun Nair, 2 Ajinkya Rahane, 3 Sanju Samson (wk), 4 Shane Watson (capt), 5 Stuart Binny, 6 Steve Smith, 7 Rajat Bhatia, 8 James Faulkner, 9 Kane Richardson, 10 Rahul Tewatia, 11 Pravin Tambe