Week 5 - Match 5 - Mumbai Indians vs Kolkata Knight Riders

Welcome to the Wankhede Stadium, home of the Mumbai Indians.

Form

MI - WLWW

KKR - WWLD

Pitch Conditions: A hard pitch offering assistance to both genuine quicks and the spinners. Medium pacers may struggle. Batting will be okay especially for batsmen bought up on sub-continent pitches.

-----

Please post tactics below...

A good cricketing pitch

Mumbai Indians

Team:

1) Sachin Tendulkar (c)
2) Shikhar Dhawan - U25
3) Tillakaratne Dilshan - O
4) Rohit Sharma - U25
5) Manoj Tiwary - U25
6) Kieron Pollard - O U25
7) Pinal Shah (wk) - U25
8) Harbhajan Singh
9) Darren Sammy - O
10) Umar Gul - O
11) Lasith Malinga - O

Toss - Bowl first, might sound odd but we believe our bowling attack can restrict Kolkata and our batting line up can chase down anything. We bat all the way down to 9. And both Gul and Malinga can swing a bat as well.

Bowling Tactics:

With the recent additions to the squad our bowling unit is even stronger this week. Munaf Patel misses out as he is not a genuine out and out quick. Darren Sammy comes in due to being quicker as well as his accuracy which will help on this pitch. Malinga and Harbhajan will open the bowling with Malinga bowling 2 overs and Harby bowling just the one. Harby will then be replaced by Darren Sammy who will the final two overs of the powerplay from that end. The final powerplay over will be bowled by Umar Gul. Gul will be replaced by the returning Harby who will bowl his next two overs back to back. At the other end Sammy will be replaced by Dilshan. Spin will be key on this pitch and Dilshan offers a great option. In turn Dilshan will be replaced by Pollard or Rohit. If the seamers are having a good time then Pollard will bowl the over, if the spinners are performing much better then Rohit will get the over. Obviously this over is flexible as if Dilshan is having a storming game with the ball then he will be allowed to bowl all 4 of his overs. If he is struggling then his 3rd over could also be bowled by Rohit or Pollard. Harby will be replaced by Sammy for his last two overs before Harby switches ends to complete his quota. Dilshan's third and final over (or Rohit/Pollard's second as mentioned above) will be the 15th over. The last 5 will be bowled, as usual, by the two greatest death bowlers in T20 cricket. Gul bowling the 16th, 18th and 20th. Malinga bowling the 17th and 19th.

Overs:

Harbajhan - 4 overs (1,8,10,13)
Malinga - 4 overs (2,4,17,19)
Sammy - 4 overs (3,5,12,14)
Gul - 4 overs (6,16,18,20)
Dilshan - 3 overs (7,9,15)
Pollard/Rohit - 1 over (11)

Batting Tactics:

As mentioned above we believe we can chase down any score with Sachin and Dhawan opening for us. Dhawan will play his usual game and look to attack. Sachin as always will look to bat through the whole innings. Dilshan is at 3 and is able to either carry on the attack or stabilise the innings if required. Rohit and Manoj at 4 and 5 are both surpemely talented batsmen and have been bought up on pitches like this one. Pollard is at 6 to hit it out of the ground although he may not be needed considering the strength of our top 5. Pinal Shah at 7 is a brilliant, and hugely underrated, young Indian batsman. Harby, Sammy, Gul and Malinga can all smash it if needed.

Bump, tactics from KKR needed

KKR XI

Chris Gayle
Jacques Kallis
Cheteshwar Pujara
Eoin Morgan
Sarul Kanwar
Yusuf Pathan
Shakib Al Hasan
Brett Lee
Zaheer Khan
Abu Nechim
Pragyan Ojha

Toss : Bat first

Overs Allocation

Lee : 1,3,17,19
Zaheer:2,4,18,20
Nechim(very impressive in the CLT20,has got pace and is sharp) :5,7,14,16

Ojha : 6,8,10,12
Shakib : 9,11,13,15

no bishoo??

lol i think u should go with prior and sachin at the top of the order, prior can hit out from the start, and sachin can just keep the scoreboard ticking over.