The Royal Challengers Bangalore meet the Kolkata Knight Riders at their home ground in Bengaluru on Sunday (April 29) evening. Both the teams have had some issues with consistency and would try and get into the winning momentum to end the league stage on a high and qualify for the play-offs. While RCB has 2 wins in 6 matches, KKR has 3 in 7- not the best stats but both teams have played their share of good cricket in the tournament.
RCB despite scoring more than 200 runs on the board against the Chennai Super Kings failed to win the match, thanks to the brilliance of Ambati Rayudu and MS Dhoni. Death bowling is a massive area of concern for RCB- in fact, RCB have conceded more than 200 runs on 3 occasions so far and they must sort it out before going to the latter stage of the tournament. A possible solution could be to bring in overseas quicks such as Tim Southee and Chris Woakes to do the job at the death, since Corey Anderson has not delivered for them with the ball.
KKR on the other hand are also coming on the back of 2 back to back defeats and would try and get the 2 points on offer tonight to get their campaign up and running after the defeats. Their bowling will also be under the radar tonight, since they conceded a 190 odd against the KXIP and over 200 against the DD. KKR would try and bounce back as a unit.
Virat Kohli should be the key as far RCB batting is concerned. Although Quinton de Kock has got starts and a few good innings, RCB will hope that he keeps firing for them at the top of the order.
Robin Uthappa, Chris Lynn and Dinesh Karthik should step up for the Kolkata Knight Riders and not throw their wickets away after getting off to starts, leaving too much work for Andre Rusell lower down the order. Nitish Rana too has been a victim of the same disease.
Expect the expected change up overseas quick Tim Southee or Woakes to make a mark straight away. Umesh Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal should continue with their good form and rhythm in the tournament, especially when Virat seems to have run out of options.
For KKR- the spinners hold the key. Sunil Narine, Piyush Chawla and Kuldeep Yadav would be tempting to score off at the Chinnaswami but might be difficult to execute the big shots against.
A high-energy clash at Bengaluru tonight. Broadcast Starts at 20:00 Hours (IST).
