thiruvananthapuram kerala are back to their lucky venue for starters kerala have so far played five ranji trophy matches at the st xaviers college ground at thumba and have convincingly won four of them the only reverse the draw against hyderabad in the season opener earlier this month when rain and an unhelpful surface came in their way but with two wins on the trot after that kerala are sitting comfortably at the top of elite group b with 13 points from three matches and will be looking to press home the advantage when they host madhya pradesh in their fourth match of the season in what is expected to be another spinfriendly trackkerala are high on confidence after their stupendous win against bengal that too playing away at the eden gardens in their firstever fourday game against their storied rivals the architect of the win with the bat jalaj saxena will be up against his native state for the first time in ranji trophy saxena had played for more than 10 years before switching over to kerala the allrounder has scored 378 runs so far with two centuries and took 12 wickets leading the batting and bowling chart for keralawhile saxenas show was expected what comes across as a massive boost for kerala is the performance of their lead quicks sandeep warrier and basil thampi the tall seamers have added a yard of pace and have been moving the ball around both took a matchhaul of seven wickets against bengal as kerala showed they are no onetrick ponies however as they return to thumba the pacers might have to take a backseat as kerala are likely to go in with leftarm spinner akshay kc in place of the third seamer nidheesh md on the batting front the match is crucial for sanju samson as he was dismissed without scoring in the last two matchesmadhya pradesh led by naman ojha have drawn all three of their games and are fifth in the table with five points rain played spoilsport in their last match against tamil nadu in dindigul as a full days play was lost all madhya pradesh matches have seen plenty of runs so far and their batsmen seem to be in good nick especially no3 rajat patidar who has scored 357 runs so far he is also one of the three madhya pradesh batsmen to have scored a century this season opener aryaman birla and middleorder batsman shubham sharma have also got to the threefigure mark once each and will be posing stiff resistance to the kerala attackwe are looking to continue the winning run madhya pradesh is a strong side but we are very positive said kerala captain sachin baby on the eve of the match