At a glance

New Zealanders in the 2018 IPL:

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Brendon McCullum, Colin de Grandhomme, Corey Anderson, Tim Southee

Delhi Daredevils: Colin Munro, Trent Boult

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson

Mumbai Indians: Mitchell McClenaghan

Mumbai Indians v Chennai Super Kings, 2.30am Sunday (NZT)

Kings XI Punjab v Delhi Daredevils, 10.30pm Sunday

Kolkata Knight Riders v Royal Challengers Bangalore, 2.30am Monday

Sunrisers Hyderabad v Rajasthan Royals, 2.30am Tuesday

Mitchell McClenaghan completes the New Zealand contingent after he was a surprise omission at the auction. He got a reprieve from defending champions Mumbai Indians last month as an injury replacement for Australian Jason Behrendorff.

For bookmakers it’s a guessing game and Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore are joint favourites ahead of opening weekend. The final is scheduled for May 27.

Coach Stephen Fleming’s Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals return from twoyear bans for the betting activities of some officials, showing there’s no competition quite like the IPL. Rising Pune Supergiant, the sub franchise for Chennai, were beaten finalists last year under Fleming and Steve Smith who joins Warner on the sidelines.

Chennai will be without Black Caps spinner Mitchell Santner who got his first IPL contract in January but is sidelined by knee surgery.

It’s a thinner New Zealand contingent after Martin Guptill, Adam Milne, Lockie Ferguson and Matt Henry weren’t re-signed at auction.

Their winning time was 42.877, but Dawkins, who rode the final leg, said he knew even before looking up at the big screens around the velodrome that they had won.

‘‘I had no doubt in my mind when we went across the line we’d won. I didn’t even have to see the time.

‘‘I looked up at the time and thought ‘yeah, that’s what it should be’, then I was looking for the boys so we could celebrate together.’’

The trio now have both the Games title and record, after clocking 42.822 in qualifying.

Dawkins said winning consecutive titles with the same team was a massive achievement. ‘‘It’s huge. Going back-to-back with the boys was all we talked about for the last month.’’

The closeness of the two times was a testament to their consistency in execution. The times were up there with some of their quickest ever, only marginally slower than their efforts at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Mitchell said the main joy he took from the win was to put behind them their sixth-placed finish at the world championships last month.

‘‘We took a big debrief process collectively, with our support staff, after the world champs and focused on how we needed to improve to come out here and perform the way we did. Individually we all did our job and the time was the time.’’

The New Zealand women’s sprint team of Natasha Hansen and Emma Cumming were earlier unable to match the pace of the high-powered Australian team of Kaarle McCulloch and Stephanie Morton in their gold medal race, going down by 0.627s.

But the silver-medal achievement of the relatively new team - Cumming is just 20 - should not be diminished. Cumming said the result was a big leap forward for the women’s sprint team.

‘‘There wasn’t a huge amount of faith in us to start with, but I think we’ve shown we have somewhere to go in the future.’’

After their qualifying run to make the final, Cycling New Zealand high performance director Martin Barras said it was a very good performance.

‘‘For me, the highlight is the