After watching Virat Kohli's match-winning knock against Delhi Daredevils on Tuesday, Gautam Gambhir, too, must be visualising the prospect of making merry at the expense of a toothless attack at his home ground.
Gambhir, who led Daredevils last year, is back at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground as the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders. Smarting under two successive defeats, KKR could not have asked for a lesser team to get the oft-repeated ‘momentum' going with a win over the host on Thursday.
KKR, the only team in the first three seasons of the IPL not to make the semifinals, is hugely favoured to break the hoodoo next month. So far, Gambhir has led from the front. His contributions at the top have played pivotal roles in placing KKR in reasonable comfort at the halfway stage of the competition.
Given the lack of bowling resources in the Daredevils camp, Gambhir can be expected to come good, even better than Kohli. KKR is one among the six teams with three wins and another triumph will help the team retain its place in the top-four.
Given the format, the line-up including Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin, Gambhir, Yusuf Pathan, Shakib al Hasan, Eoin Morgan, besides the seasoned Delhi all-rounder Rajat Bhatia, gives KKR a fine mix. However, the unpredictability of the middle-order is surely a source of worry.
With L. Balaji, the comeback man, and young Jaidev Unadkat forming the medium-pace attack, the Pathan-Hasan duo providing the spin options with Iqbal Abdulla, KKR's attack looks pretty decent.
Daredevils, however, is grappling with worries in the bowling department. Even its reasonable batting line-up is not sure of a ‘safe' total to post, given the frailty of its bowlers. In the last two home games, Morne Morkel has been the only bowler to make an impression.
Little support
However, with little support from the other end for Morkel, Daredevils is indeed worried since Irfan Pathan, Ashok Dinda, Ajit Agarkar, Varun Aaron, Umesh Yadav and James Hopes have all failed to deliver. The fortune of the team depends heavily on openers Virender Sehwag and David Warner.
Should the duo exit early, the scales straightaway tilt in favour of the opposition. The middle-order, where Venugopala Rao is the only reliable performer so far, looks brittle.
