MATCH PREDICTION: Top Guns will prevail over the Mumbai Rockets in a close contest

BENGALURU TOP GUNS will look for their first win in the Premier Badminton League (PBL) against Mumbai Rockets in the second match today at the Babu Banarasi Das Badminton Stadium in Lucknow.

Bengaluru's star shuttler, Kidambi Srikanth, is high on confidence after beating former world no. 1 Lee Chong Wei in his first match against Hyderabad Hunters. In today's match, Srikanth is likely to play against Prannoy and this too should make for an interesting contest.

RULES: Each tie comprises of 5 matches -- Men’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Singles, Mixed Doubles & Men’s Singles.  Each Match will be played as best-of-three games, with each game being a race to 15 points and a sudden death at 14-14. After each team shares the list of players who will be playing the 5 matches and their choice of Trump match, the order of play will be mutually decided by the technical team of PBL & broadcaster Star India before each tie (from a neutral perspective) to keep the schedule unpredictable.

TRUMP MATCH: Each team strategically selects one of the 5 matches that they play in a Tie as their Trump match. In a Trump match, a victory gives the team a bonus point and a loss gives it a negative point. A team cannot put the same player in the Trump matches proposed by them more than twice in the league stage and once in the knockout stage i.e. if team A places 5 trump matches during the league stage, any player can take part in maximum two of those 5 matches. However, the participation of a player in a Trump match proposed by the opponent will not be counted in this maximum 2 criterion.

For scoring in a Trump match, victory in a normal match gives 1 point, loss carries 0 points. In a Trump match, the team that has called for the Trump gets 2 points for victory and -1 for a loss. However, the other team will play this match as a normal match and will either get 1 or 0 points for win or loss respectively. If both the teams place the Trump on the same match, then for both of them +2 or -1 scoring will apply for win or loss respectively.

TFG analyses and predicts the winner of the match based on a possible line-up of players, as the teams have to announce their team and Trump match only an hour before the game.

MUMBAI ROCKETS vs BENGALURU TOP GUNS

The following shuttlers are likely to play against each other in their respective categories: Men's singles: Prannoy (Mumbai) against Srikanth (Bengaluru); Men's doubles: Ivanov/Boe against Khim Wah Lim/Hoon Thien How (Bengaluru); Women's Singles: Han Li (Mumbai) against Suo Di (Bengaluru); Men's singles: Gurusaidutt (Mumbai) against Anand Pawar (Bengaluru); Mixed doubles: Ivanov/Kamilla (Mumbai) against Jochiam Fischer/Ponnappaa (Bengaluru).

It remains to be seen which matches each team will nominate as their Trump match. Mumbai should be looking at putting the Trump on Gurusaidutt's match as he holds an upper hand over Anand Pawar. Gurusai displayed great performance in his first match against Sai Praneeth.

Srikanth will be the favourite to win against Prannoy after his thrilling win over Lee in the first match. The Bengaluru shuttler also holds the lead in the head-to-head count.

"Having trained with Prannoy on a regular basis, sharing ways to improve your game is definitely helpful when you are looking to compete in the Olympics and it helps that we are all at the same level in terms of competition," said Srikanth.

The Top Guns are likely to nominate their mixed doubles contest which should be their Trump match. Fischer/Ponnappa have the experience of playing with each other and they proved it again in their first match. They should triumph over Ivanov/Kamilla of Mumbai.

The men's doubles contest should get yet another win for the Rockets pair. They have won both the matches, one of which was the Trump. Against Top Guns too, Boe/Ivanov are favourites for a win over Lim/How.

The women's singles tie would be end in Top Guns favour as Suo Di had a great outing in her first match. Han Li would still be recovering from her loss against Sindhu (Chennai).

It is going to be a close contest with the margin of victory being 1. As we see it, the Top Guns have that extra firepower to snatch a victory through one of their men's and the women's singles matches.