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Opportunity for Pune to rise on the points table: Gavaskar

With the Royal Challengers Challenge seemingly petering off the Rising Pune Supergiant has a great opportunity to rise on the points table after their big defeat to the Kolkata team.

What has been surprising is the abject failure of the strong batting line-up of the Bangalore team on pitches where there has been help for the bowlers.

For the second consecutive game that they played, they floundered when the ball started to do something and showed a weakness that had not been seen or noticed earlier. Now all teams that play against them in the remaining matches will try and prepare pitches where there is a bit of seam movement and bounce and hope to contain the destructive line-up.

Of course plans in cricket don’t always work as the Pune team found out. They would have thought that the score they had on board was enough against the Kolkata team but the Knight Riders have been in such great form and have so much self-belief that no target is going to daunt them.

Uthappa has once again started batting like he did a couple of years back when he smashed everything out of sight and with Gambhir also flourishing the top three give the team just the impetus they need.

Mumbai Indians also will be looking to get back to winning ways after that heartbreaking loss in their previous game. They brought it upon themselves by trying to shift the batting order and promoting Karn Sharma who was playing his first match ahead of Kieron Pollard who is in a terrific form.

Just because the promotion of Sunil Narine up the order is working for the Kolkata team doesn’t mean that every left-hander sent up from his usual position down the order is going to come up trumps.

The Gujarat team is a resurgent team now after that easy win over the Royal Challengers. Their batting looks awesome and when Brendon McCullum really gets going they are going to be unstoppable. Aaron Finch played an incredible innings where he ensured that the Bangalore team did not get a sniff of a chance and with Raina batting with his usual panache the Gujarat team is one to reckon with.

The addition of Nathu Singh to their bowling unit and the continued progress of Basil Thampi is giving them the early wickets that is setting the opposition back.

The Maharashtra teams will want to get back to winning ways but it looks a lot easier for Pune to do so than Mumbai on this super Saturday.

Source: PMG



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