(Cricket news) Kolkata Knight Riders face off Royal Challengers Bangalore in the eliminator as both teams after a long time have a chance for IPL glory. Both the sides come into this match with a point to prove, Virat Kohli in his final season as captain would want to win the IPL trophy for the first time in the franchise history and as for KKR, they were down and out of the tournament in the first half of the season, but a quick change in fortunate has surely given them a chance to script a great comeback story.

RCB this season have gone strength to strength and have pretty much settled with a set playing XI. With the added form of Srikar Bharat at number 3, it allows the likes of Glenn Maxwell and AB de Villiers to play with much more freedom. If RCB are to negate KKR’s spin threat in the middle overs, Glenn Maxwell will be crucial to break the shackles for KKR. The area of concern going into the match for RCB will be that they have picked up only one wicket in the powerplay. Shubham Gill and Venkatesh Iyer on the other hand have given blistering starts to KKR this season, something that the RCB team management need to look out for. The match up against ABD and the KKR spinners will be the key as he can be the deciding factor in such a high intensity match.

KKR have a selection headache as it will be interesting if Russell or Shakib plays in this eliminator. It is crucial for Gill and Iyer to give them a good start so that the middle order have the platform to play fearless cricket, something that KKR team management have adopted in the second leg of the tournament. As for the bowlers, the two mystery spinners will be the key to stop the run flow, if danger man Glenn Maxwell gets going then it will be difficult for the KKR bowlers to contain him. The KKR think tank might just include Shakib in the playing XI considering this season AB de Villiers has gotten out three times to a left arm spinner where he has just managed 21 runs of 27 balls.

Head to head: RCB 13 – 15 KKR, the last time they met KKR completely dominated them winning by 9 wickets with 60 balls remaining.

Pitch and weather report: The Sharjah pitch this season has thrown quite a curveball as they have produced the most unexpected wickets, like we saw in the previous matches a target close to 160 is a winning score as the spinners will get a lot of assistance through the pitch and also the new ball zips a lot on the surface. Temperature will hover around 40 degrees as there is no chance of rain.

Interesting facts:

• This is the first time both the teams have faced off each in the playoffs
• Narine has 9 playoff appearance and has a very poor record of picking up just 4 wickets and averaging 8.60 runs
• Mohammed Siraj is one wicket away from claiming 100 wickets in T20
• Glenn Maxwell has hit 101 off 63 against spinners especially in the middle overs
• In games in Sharjah this IPL, the team that has scored more in the powerplay has always won the match. 

Also read: IPL: Can Kolkata Knight Riders win their third title this season?

Probable XI for RCB:

1 Virat Kohli (capt), 2 Devdutt Padikkal, 3 KS Bharat (wk), 4 Glenn Maxwell, 5 AB de Villiers, 6 Dan Christian, 7 Shahbaz Ahmed, 8 George Garton, 9 Harshal Patel, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal.

Probable XI for KKR:

1 Shubman Gill, 2 Venkatesh Iyer, 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Rahul Tripathi, 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6 Eoin Morgan (capt), 7 Andre Russell/Shakib Al Hasan, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Lockie Ferguson, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Shivam Mavi.