Apart from Rashid Khan, none of the other SRH bowlers were exceptional so far. When they are forced to include ordinary players such as Sandeep Sharma  and Siddarth Kaul, you know that their bowling attack is going to be wobbly. SRH batting on the other hand looks more solid, with players such as David Warner, Jonny Bairstow, Kane Williamson and Manish Pandey constituting the top order.

When Sreyas Iyer asked Kagiso Rabada to bowl the 10th over, I though that it will turn out to be a gigantic blunder. Rabada always do better in the depth overs. But in the 4th ball, he got the most important KKR batsman out ('Dre Russell). Nitish Rana is still there, but Dinesh Karthik and Eoin Morgan needs to make sure that the required run rate doesn't climb above 13-14 runs per over.

Trump is a conservative with libertarian leaning. He is for lower taxes, irrespective of the income range. On the other hand, Biden is a liberal with socialist leaning. Kamala is even more liberal-socialist when compared to Biden. And as far as cryptocurrency is concerned, I have a feeling that Trump/Pence is going to be far better than Biden/Kamala. Socialism can never be good for cryptocurrency. 

Second round was pretty tough.. After I lost two consecutive matches (RCB vs MI, and DC vs SRH), I thought that I am out of contention for the second round. Fortunately I got 2 from the remaining two matches.


From what I have seen so far in this IPL, we had some great performances from the youngsters. But in most cases they were unable to take their team to victory (example is Ishan Kishan's innings against the RCB, where he got out at the most crucial moment). Now KL Rahul is not an inexperienced player. But he showed a lot of immaturity in the last match against MI. It was known to everyone that Cottrell is not very useful in the end overs. So he did the right thing by bowling him out in the first half. But he should have kept Mohammed Shami to the end. But Shami bowled out half of his overs in the beginning. Since they didn't had any other pace bowlers in the playing XI (apart from Neesham), the spinners had to bowl a majority of the overs from 15-20. And Pollard/Pandya just butchered them.

The problem in having such a strong top order is that the middle order batsmen seldom gets a chance to play long innings. It was evident from the way Karun Nair, James Neesham and Glen Maxwell batted. They looked rusty. Nicholas Pooran looked good, but he couldn't convert his good start in to a match winning innings. KXIP needs to improve upon their death overs bowling. Everytime Agarwal and Rahul won't be able to 100 plus stands.

KXIP needs 76 from 3.5 overs to win. What made the real difference was the fireworks by Kieron Pollard and Hardik Pandya in the end. Without those, it could have been a cakewalk for the KXIP, especially with Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul in such great form. I agree with the captaincy part. It was very poor captaincy from the part of KL Rahul to bowl out Cottrell and Shami.

WTF? That means that if you bet in favor of Pacquiao, then even if he wins you may not get anything in return (after the deposit fees, commission and taxes). What is the point in such a high odd? If you make a bet for $1,200, then you may end up with $100 if Manny wins. And out of this $100, they will cut $90 as commission and deposit fee (depending on the gambling site). Take my advice, and go for McGregor. You will win a fortune if you are lucky.

During off-match hours, it works fine. I guess when the match starts, a lot of people try to login and as a result the server crashes. It is always better to lock your picks at least 24 hours before the match. I agree that last minute inclusions and exclusions can happen, but there is a far greater risk of unable to lock your side if you delay the decision for too long.

LOL... I fixed the match result, but forgot to fix the margins? In that case the suspicion should be on those who won the margin point as well. Royse and JSRAW got 2 points from this match. Why don't you accuse them? 

Anyway, just one match remaining in the second round. Good luck for everyone on the sole remaining match of this round. It's going to be another exciting match tomorrow between the KXIP and the Mumbai Indians.

39/2 after 6 overs. I would rather say that KKR is having the advantage here. The pitch at Dubai International Cricket Stadium is not very favorable for the batsmen. Out of the 6 overs in the initial powerplay, Cummins bowled half of them (three). The main vulnerability with RR is that they are very dependent on some of the top batsmen (such as Smith and Samson). Now both these batsmen are back in pavilion. Robin Uthappa is a good batsman, but his strike rate is not as good as it used to be.

Pat Cummins got Steve Smith, and Shivam Mavi got Sanju Samson. Now Rajasthan Royals are in big trouble. Apart from Buttler, all of their top batsmen are gone and this pitch is not that easy to bat on. I hope that after two consecutive defeats, I will get one point today. As long as Buttler is there, RR has a chance. And Lord Tewatia is yet to come. He is someone who can singlehandedly change the course of the match.

I agree. Biden's plan to tax capital gains on par with other income (39.6%) is going to destroy the US economy. The investors will simply dump the US stocks and move to some other country, where the capital gains tax is in the 10%-15% range. Biden's plan is to loot money from the middle-class and the rich, and to redistribute that money to those who don't work. It is not a sustainable policy, as we have seen in the case of Venezuela and Cuba.

As expected, a majority of the users have gone for Rajasthan today. Me and JSRAW are among the few who went in favor of KKR. One factor that made me go in KKR favor was the excellent record that Sunil Narine is having against Samson/Smith. In the previous editions, Samson struggled against the spin of Narine. Also, Pat Cummins seems to have regained his form. BTW, the RR bowling is a joke (apart from Archer).

Obviously cryptocurrency is blamed when someone used it to commit a crime (although researchers have found that only 1-2% of the Bitcoin transactions have any relation with contraband or crime). Fiat remains the currency of choice for the vast majority of the criminals and to this I haven't heard of anyone accusing the fiat currency for crime.

It is T20 cricket. Your fortunes can change in just 2 minutes. All it takes is an Ishan Kishan or a Rahul Tewatia to play the innings of his lifetime. A single misfield or a dropped catch can cost you the match. It can be even a single wide ball or a leg-bye. So don't think too much about the points. As you said, Lord Tewatia proved that nothing is impossible as far as T20 cricket is concerned. 

RR have the best batting lineup in this edition of the IPL, with Sanju Samson/Steven Smith/Jos Buttler in top order and Rahul Tewatia/Robin Uthappa in middle order. The KKR bowlers are going to face a tough challenge. This match is essentially a battle between the RR batsmen and the KKR bowlers. But to their credit, KKR do have some good experienced bowlers such as Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins and Kuldeep Yadav. And it is going to be quite exciting to watch Kamlesh Nagarkoti bowl against Sanju Samson.

Today it worked for SRH.

But remember that they included a batsmen (Kane Williamson) in the place of an all-rounder (Mohammad Nabi). For today's match, they didn't faced any issue because the other bowlers (except Khaleel Ahmed) did a good job. But what will happen, in case their main bowlers fail? They do have a number of inexperienced faces in their lineup and the presence of Nabi gives them an additional bowling option.

Two consecutive losses for me. Hopefully now no one would accuse me of fixing matches. 

Today the SRH bowlers performed well. Rashid Khan was outstanding, but he got enough support from Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Thangarasu Natarajan. Even Abhishek Sharma did a decent job. The only weak point was Khaleel Ahmed, who leaked plenty of runs. The young DC batting lineup once again got decent start, but the batsmen failed to convert these starts to good scores.

They had to drop Mohammed Nabi in order to include Kane Williamson. But in the end, it turned out to be a good move. But I am not sure whether his absence would be felt in the second innings or not. SRH do have a weak bowling lineup and Nabi was quite useful with his off-spinners. Anyway, now the SRH bowlers such as Khaleel Ahmed and Thangarasu Natarajan don't have any room for error.

In the end, it all depends on whether the team gets two points for the win or not. Ishan Kishan played an exceptional innings. I would even say that with this single innings, he would have definitely caught attention of the Indian selectors. All I am saying is that after putting so much effort, he could have just scored another boundary and took his team to victory. When he got out, 5 runs was needed from 2 balls. One good shot would have given 2 points to his team.