Royals take on depleted Delhi | PunterPolls Prediction

The first couple of matches are always about getting the ball rolling in a long tournament where the teams go through cycles of form and they are important in helping team management take an uncomplicated view. Rajasthan Royals open their season with a clean slate when they take on a depleted home side, Delhi Daredevils, who had an insipid outing in Kolkata in the first match of the tournament.

Royals are without one man who is likely to be a constant in their equation this season - Shane Watson, who is not available for this match - and that opens up a vital spot for them to test one of their imports. In-form Sri Lanka batsman Kusal Perera is almost certain in the XI but the choice of other three could depend on the surface laid out in Delhi. The other interesting bit for Royals would be how their captain-cum-coach Rahul Dravid copes with his first taste of competitive cricket in almost a year. The longer he takes to find his groove, the more muddled the strategies would get.

Daredevils are still handicapped by the absence of two of their impact players - Virender Sehwag, who is out with back spasms, and Morne Morkel, who is playing domestic Twenty20 in South Africa. But this time, they are playing at home, against a not-so-daunting opponent they have beaten every time at home and the team would hope to put up a better batting performance to get a move on.

PunterPolls Prediction

Yesterday Hydrabad won a stunner, this is called IPL - perfect defination of cricket. Two back to back thrilling games, MI lost with couple of runs and now Pune fall off while chasing 127 with stars batsmen.

Its really been difficult and challenging to predict this format, especially when both teams have mix of international players as well as domestic players. We had already done a mistake in the opener by predicting Delhi before the start of the match and at that day we had decided to predict only when will be confident enough.

So, we didn't predicted anything about yesterday encounter but the poll results itself can explain the story that match went against the punters wish. But will try to post our favourite team for both the matches today. Stay tuned with us, keep visiting this page, members do regular check your emails as we used to notify our members via email about our predictions and do like our facebook page  to stay connected.

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Its second strategic timeout  Rajasthan scored 127/2 in 16 overs. Our experts believe Rajasthan Royals should win this game.