IPL 2014: 1st match – Mumbai Indians v Kolkata Knight Riders, April 16, 2014

Match Preview

Its IPL in action on and off the field but IPL fans are more interested in on-field action rather then off-field and the action will begin from today's match between defending champions Mumbai Indian will take on Kolkata Knight Riders at 7 pm India time.

New Teams, New Venue but same old battle. KKR now does have quality bowlers as well which they were lacking in the earlier seasons. Smith and Sachin are missing from the new MI batting line-up but now they have super performer Hussy in their team now.

PunterPolls Prediction

Please read on to see what our experts say about the game.

Both teams have kept their key players, Gautam Gambhir, Sunil Narine, Jacques Kallis and Yusuf Pathan for KKR and Mumbai Indian apart from keeping the 5 key players they invested in most reliable batsmen of the IPL M.Hussy apart from the Corie Anderson will be the player to watch.

Both teams have a quality spin attack as in the form of Harbhajan and Ojha for Mumbai, whereas KKR has Narine and Chawla. Overall one can say, both teams are quite strong but MI does have a bit of edge because of their depth in batting.

In between, KKR won the toss and elected to bat first. Abu Dabi's pitch is a little bit on a slower side and doesn't have enough runs so far. If the pitch remains according to the records, chasing will be a bit difficult on this track.

As far as predicting the winner is a concern, our experts have decided to watch out the game for a few overs before jumping into the conclusion. So stay tuned and watch out for our comments at the bottom of this page.

Update

Well KKR has scored 163. The target of 164 is not that easy for Mumbai Indians on this pitch. Mumbai inning has just started and they have score 9/0 in 2 overs. Our experts are supporting KKR in this match.