Preview by Ghcalive Staff
The IPL’s halfway point has arrived, and the top seven teams are vying for positions in the final four in a pretty heated competition. One of these teams is Royal Challengers Bangalore, who will be hosting Kolkata Knight Riders and looking to win three straight games for the first time in IPL 2023. But since Brendon McCullum set the tone for the IPL in the opening game in 2008, they haven’t had a fantastic home record against the Knight Riders. The last time RCB defeated KKR at home was back in 2015. They will be trying to break the losing streak against a Knight Riders club that is under pressure after four straight losses.
This will be the RCB’s sixth and final home game before they go on a five-match road trip. They haven’t turned the Chinnaswamy Stadium into their fortress, as they have in the past, losing two of the five games that have been played there. Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell, and Virat Kohli have accounted for 78.6% of the runs that the RCB players have scored this season in their batting order. The totals RCB finished with in their last two games show that despite their bowlers masking these flaws, a flimsy middle-order hasn’t been able to build on the strong beginnings.
With 17 wickets lost in the first six overs, the highest of any club in 2017 IPL, KKR’s batting in the powerplay has shown to be their Achilles Heel. This has resulted in them having a lot of catching up to do, both when establishing targets and chasing. While the pace department has been a disappointment for the club, KKR’s spinners Varun CV, Sunil Narine, and Suyansh Sharma have been doing all the heavy lifting with the ball. Umesh Yadav, who excelled in the powerplay the season before, has only taken one wicket, while the rest have also performed poorly. An obvious problem for KKR is the pacers’ collective economy rate of 12.46.
When: Wednesday, April 26 at 7:30 PM IST
Where: Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru
PITCH REPORT
It will be the second-to-last game played at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium this year. The batters in this game will probably receive a lot of assistance from the pitch. In the most recent T20 matches played here, the first innings score was 194 runs on average.
What to expect: In the two prior night games played here, LSG won a chase of 213 while RCB fell just 8 short of CSK’s 226. The RCB-KKR match will be played on the same pitch as the match against the Delhi Capitals. DC was only able to finish 151/9 of the race while chasing 175, as a result of the slower track. Under lights, the course is thought to favour hitters more, but that game was played in the afternoon. There will likely be another popular entertainer.
Head to head: With 17 victories and 14 defeats over RCB, KKR is in the lead in terms of face-offs. RCB, though, has triumphed four times in their last six IPL matches.
Team watch
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Regular skipper du Plessis’ rib injury forced RCB to adopt the Impact sub rule to just play him as a hitter in their past two games, Kohli leading the team. Faf is progressing really well, according to head coach Mike Hesson, so this is probably going to continue. The possibility of fielding, diving, and reinjuring still exists. In such case, we won’t put him in danger. Josh Hazlewood has been making strong rehabilitation progress, according to Hesson, who also stated that RCB is seeking approval from Cricket Australia for his participation.
Matchups & tactic: Even though the Knight Riders largely rely on their spinners, RCB has the chance to isolate them this season because spin has less of an impact on night games at the Chinnaswamy. Only nine of the 64 wickets that have been lost in these five games have been taken by spinners, who have an economy rate of 10.13 and an average of 44.67.
Probable XI: Virat Kohli (c), Faf du Plessis, Mahipal Lomror, Glenn Maxwell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Suyash Prabhudessai, David Willey, Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Siraj. Impact Player – Vyshak Vijaykumar.
Kolkata Knight Riders
When Jason Roy had to leave the field for 12 minutes near the end of KKR’s bowling inning against CSK, the team had to deploy a different opening combination for the fifth time in seven games. Roy will resume his position at the top for this game, and David Wiese might receive another chance despite his poor performance against CSK. Kulwant Khejroliya could be replaced because Shardul Thakur bowled a lengthy stint during the practise session.
Matchups & tactic: Virat Kohli was eliminated by Sunil Narine four times, despite the fact that his average against the West Indian spinner was only 25.50 and his strike rate was 100. While Narine is also an excellent match-up against Maxwell, having dismissed him three times and giving up only 59 off 59, KKR will consider deploying him during the powerplay.
Probable XI: N Jagadeesan (wk), Jason Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana (c), Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, David Wiese, Shardul Thakur, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy. Impact Player – Suyansh Sharma.
Did you realise?
Royal Challengers Bangalore, who are now fourth among all teams in terms of scoring rates in IPL death overs with a rate of 9.86, have scored at an average rate of 8.30 per over (16–20) over their last four games.
In this IPL, Virat Kohli has scored 108 runs off 64 balls and has not yet been removed by a right-arm bowler. In the IPL 2023, Kohli has an overall average against pace of 75 and a strike rate of 171. He averages 22.25 with a strike rate of 103, although he has struggled against spin, falling to it four times.
How they spoke
“If we look back at last year, the top order struggled, and individuals like Shahbaz, DK, and Lomror stood out for us then. We’ve already played five home games this season, where the top order will obviously perform well.We have a lot of faith in our middle order as the tournament progresses, we move past Chinnaswamy, and they get more opportunities. — Mike Hesson, director of cricket operations at the RCB.
“The talk in the camp is that we’ve just got to keep pushing hard, we got to keep enjoying ourselves. It’s very easy in cricket, especially in short format cricket, to lose and lose a lot of confidence. So we’re trying to keep the confidence high, trying to smile around the change room, making sure that our methods don’t change too much.” – Jason Roy, KKR batter.
Squads:
Royal Challengers Bangalore Squad: Virat Kohli(c), Faf du Plessis, Mahipal Lomror, Glenn Maxwell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik(w), Suyash Prabhudessai, David Willey, Wanindu Hasaranga, Mohammed Siraj, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Harshal Patel, Akash Deep, Finn Allen, Karn Sharma, Anuj Rawat, Michael Bracewell, Siddarth Kaul, Sonu Yadav, Manoj Bhandage, Wayne Parnell, Rajan Kumar, Avinash Singh, Himanshu Sharma
Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: N Jagadeesan(w), Jason Roy, Nitish Rana(c), Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, David Wiese, Kulwant Khejroliya, Suyash Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, Mandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Vaibhav Arora, Litton Das, Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Shardul Thakur, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Harshit Rana, Aarya Desai
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