(Cricket news) Royal Challengers were left disappointed against the Punjab Kings as they couldn’t defend 205 runs, on the other hand Kolkata Knight Riders produced a clinical performance to get a victory over the defending champions CSK. Brendon McCullum, the coach of KKR and Mike Hesson the coach of RCB, the two men who orchestrated New Zealand's rise as a white-ball cricket will find themselves battling each other out when Kolkata Knight Riders take on Royal Challengers Bangalore.
RCB’s first match indicated that their batting runs deep but their same problem of leaking runs in the death overs continued as last match IPL debutants Odean Smith and Bhanuka Rajapaksa had a field day batting against a very docile bowling lineup. Glenn Maxwell is often that fulcrum for this RCB side, as not only is he the chief destructor with the bat through the middle overs but more importantly his off-spin is a vital counter to opposition stacking up left-handers and something that RCB will miss considering KKR have three powerful left handers in the team. One thing the RCB camp will be really pleased with is the form of Faf Du Plessis, who just missed out on a hundred against PBKS as fans will be hoping that he leads the side from the front with his exquisite batting.
KKR ticked all the boxes against CSK in the last match as Umesh Yadav wreaked havoc in the Chennai batting line up with his early swing movement. The Knights displayed their bowling might against CSK so much so that the batters simply had to turn up and play sensibly to seal the deal, which they did quite comfortably. Since IPL 2020, KKR are one of three sides that have conceded 10+ runs an over in the death overs as the likes of Shivam Mavi and Andre Russell conceded 47 runs in the last three overs but on the contrary, Narine and Chakravarthy at the other end against Super Kings conceded 11.6 runs per over. The KKR think tank needs to figure out the best way of utilising the 8 overs from their spinners as they hold the key to their chance of victory. In the last match, we saw Nitish Rana walk ahead of Shreyas Iyer at number 3, a decision which raised many eyebrows but Rana’s role was simple as he was given licence to play free, something that will continue in this match as well.
Pitch and weather report: As we saw in the previous matches that the pitch is a good one for batting. The bounce is good, the outfield is quick, the boundaries are short and the batters can definitely score a lot of runs on this pitch. The temperature is going to hover around 38 degrees with chances of rain
Interesting facts:
- Faf du Plessis won the Man of the match twice against KKR last season,
- Mohammed Siraj has not taken a wicket in the PowerPlay in the last 10 IPL games
- Andre Russell and Sunil Narine have strike rates of 215.12 and 196.43 respectively.
- Russell has hit 75 sixes which are the second most in the tournament since 2019
- Ajinkya Rahane needs 15 runs to 4000 IPL runs and become the ninth Indian to do so
Probable XI for RCB:
1 Faf du Plessis (capt), 2 Anuj Rawat, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 5 Sherfane Rutherford, 6 Shahbaz Ahmed, 7 Wanindu Hasaranga, 8 Harshal Patel, 9 David Willey, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Sidharth Kaul
Probable XI for KKR:
1 Venkatesh Iyer, 2 Ajinkya Rahane, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Nitish Rana, 5 Sam Billings/Mohammad Nabi, 6 Sheldon Jackson (wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Umesh Yadav, 10 Shivam Mavi, 11 Varun Chakravarthy
Also read: CSK, LSG seek improvement in top-order batting after opening losses
