Add to that the home advantage factor - Sawai Mansingh Stadium, where they have many memorable wins, will give them some extra confidence. They were the first side to win at home this season and will surely look to carry on with that.
Going by individual strengths, Kolkata look way ahead on paper, but then T20 is known to throw up surprises. An Amit Singh can make a Jacques Kallis look quite ordinary, a fact that even Kolkata's Laxmi Ratan Shukla agreed with. Kolkata's loss to Delhi in a 12-over-each-side-game would irk skipper Gautam Gambhir. The loss itself can be acceptable but the fact that they lost nine wickets would be a matter of concern.
Gambhir came down heavily on his batsmen following the defeat, and rightly so. In contrast, the Rajasthan batsmen gave their bowlers enough runs against Punjab. On a beautiful batting track, a target of 192 would make any opponent jittery.
"Even by T20 standards, that was big," Rajasthan's Johan Botha said on Saturday. Punjab just wilted under the run heap and once again the importance of a good opening partnership was highlighted. Whatever the format of the game, a good opening partnership goes a long way in deciding the fate of the match.
Rajasthan have the perfect men up there, with skipper Rahul Dravid and Ajinkya Rahane proving to be the right combination. Rajasthan have worked on their opening combo during practice and this pair has proved to be the best available.
It also helps them that both the batsmen are quite underrated in the T20 format. This allows them to throw up a few surprises, as they did against Punjab.
Talking about the bowling, Rajasthan seem to be spoilt for choice. They could leave out Shaun Tait, even though Sreesanth has not yet recovered from injury. There was nothing wrong with Tait, Botha said. In their first match they put faith in lesser-known names, who delivered.
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