Gillies look for change in fortune

The Dragons are in red-hot form winning all their four matches and have a foot in the last four of the tournament. The Gillies, currently placed fourth after four rounds, would need to win two of their remaining three games to advance to the business end of the tournament. 

The Dragons, sans Ravichandran Ashwin, have done extremely well to stay on top of the table. Their batting mainstays N Jagadeesan and V Ganga Sridhar Raju have been in top form and the way they have paced their innings has been instrumental in Dragons’ match-winning totals. 

M Ashwin, MS Sanjay and last match’s super-over hero T Natarajan spearhead the bowling attack and with a strong bowling line-up, the Dragons’ strength lies in their bowlers. They have bowled good lengths and have choked teams stemming the run flow at an alarming rate for the opposition. 

With Guru Kedarnath and Sunny Singh in their ranks, Dragons have a bowling unit that works like a well-oiled machine. However, the Dragons have kept the suspense over Ashwin’s availability for the game and it would be known only on Thursday morning. 

On the contrary, Chepauk Super Gillies would give their best shot in an attempt to get back to winning ways. The Super Gillies lost their last match in the middle overs when they failed to take singles and looked for the big hits alone. Having learnt the hard way, the Gillies wouldn’t want to repeat their mistake. 

It would be interesting to see the approach of opener Thalaivan Sargunam. Capable of clearing the ropes with ease, it is high time Thalaivan played a big knock. 

With R Sathish, Vasanth Saravanan, Gowjith Subash and Antony Dhas in the middle order, the Gillies have enough experience to see them through with useful partnerships. 

Sai Kishore has been good with the ball along with medium-pacer Dhas. The young Alexander, too, can bowl some tight overs with good economy rates. Sathish has done reasonably well with the new ball too making the Super Gillies a complete all-round unit. 

Thursday’s pulsating contest would be a tussle between the Dragons bowlers and the Chepauk batsmen.