IPL - Rajasthan Royals (Jaipur) v Kings XI Punjab (Mohali)

The Indian Premier League is less than a week old but plenty of questions can be answered after the high-flying start to the tournament. For starters, the IPL kicked off with everyone wondering whether players would take it seriously or it was just a mickey mouse hit-and-giggle event where players would simply go through the motions and bank their cheques. Well, we are here to tell you there is no funny business going on. It might have a light-hearted, high-entertainment look about it but players want to win. You only had to look at the emotion - and sheer relief - on Rahul Dravid's face after his Bangalore team opened their account to realise it is a fair-dinkum contest. That's great news from a punting point of view that there is no half-hearted monkey business going on and everyone is trying their bums off.

We also have the answer to another question - what is a winning score in this IPL tournament? The answer is clear: there is no such thing as a winning score. Totals vary wildly depending on the pitch and ground conditions. While 190 is barely a par score in some areas, it would win 90 per cent of matches in other regions. You only had to take one glimpse at the shocking pitch at Eden Gardens for the big Hyderabad v Kolkata match to know that local conditions play a big part. It was probably the worst pitch we have ever seen - with massive plumes of dust rising whenever the ball hit the pitch - and we will be approaching any further matches at Kolkata with a huge dose of caution.

Attention now turns to the Jaipur v Mohali clash and the good news here is that for the first time this tournament we have a match where both teams have form under their belt. In both cases, it is losing form with both franchises starting the tournament with defeats. Mohali have the much better formline as they put up a valiant fight against Chennai the other night. Chasing 240, Mohali (207) went down swinging with James Hopes leading the way and Kumar Sangakkara chipping in. Despite the loss, Mohali would have gained much confidence - all of their top batsmen including skipper Yuvraj Singh got time in the middle.

A question mark hangs over their bowling but you can't imagine an attack containing Brett Lee, Sreesanth and James Hopes going for as many runs again. By contrast, Jaipur was dead-set awful in its loss to Delhi with not a single batsman firing and the bowlers getting poleaxed. Mohali not only goes into this game with much better form but they simply look to have too many guns for Shane Warne's Jaipur. Jaipur would need both Shane Watson and Darren Lehmann to hit slashing knocks to have any chance and even then they would be overwhelmed by a strong Mohali batting lineup anchored by the impressive Hopes and containing Yuvraj, Sangakkara and co. It's impossible to look past Mohali here and we think they are a good bet at $1.52 with Blue Square and $1.50 with Lasseters. Get on for 1.5 units.

SINGH SONG

We never, ever, thought we'd say this but we have found a decent bet on Yuvraj Singh! Regular followers of these pages would know that we don't think Yuvraj has the head for Test cricket. We do however think he is a Twenty20 gun because it's a game that he doesn't have to think about - just hit and swing. We like Yurvaj (Mohali) in Lasseters market at $1.90 to score more runs than fellow Indian Mohammad Kaif (Jaipur), we'll have 1 unit on this. Yuvraj is a Twenty20 pro and has an imposing record in the format - remember it was only last year he hit six sixes in an over in the inuagural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa. Yuvraj has fine international T20 stats - averaging 35 with a strike rate of 177. By contrast, Kaif is not a recognised international T20 player and his domestic T20 form is modest at best with an average of 22. Yuvraj got plenty of dollars for his signature with Mohali and we think he will live up to the hype here.