Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will be up against Rajasthan Royals today in the fifth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at Jaipur.
The Royals have been doing exceedingly well in the on-going season under the leadership of Rahul Dravid as they are number two on the points table with eight points after seven matches. Whereas, RCB has also picked up momentum in their last two matches after a horrible start in the tournament.
RCB started the event as one of the favourites because of a star-studded line-up. The likes of Chris Gayle, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Muttiah Muralitharan and Zaheer Khan are match-winners in their own rights. However, they failed to finish games in the initial part of the season.
Apart from Gayle and de Villiers, RCB’s batting has generally struggled in the tournament. As the event moves forward, the other batsmen must start to perform consistently in order to threaten some of the major teams like Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. The big problem with RCB has been their reliance on individual performances.
Gayle has been brilliant in the tournament so far and has shown tremendous form. The mighty left-hander played a huge role in his team’s success in the previous two matches (with scores of 81 and 87) and will surely pose a real danger for the Royals.
Since the last one year, Kohli has emerged as one of the most brilliant limited-overs batsmen of the world. However, the right-hander has not made an impact in the current season of the cash-rich league. The youngster is too good a player to miss out on a number of matches on the trot, so one can expect him to come good today.
Bangalore’s bowling remains a huge concern because Zaheer and Daniel Vettori have not found much support from the other bowlers. Indian international, Vinay Kumar was very highly rated before the start of the tournament but the right-arm medium-fast bowler has so far disappointed in the fifth season of the league.
On the other hand, Royals have been brilliant in the tournament so far as they have gelled well as a unit. The top-order batsmen, Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Dravid have been performing on regular basis and their middle-order has the ability to smash different bowling attacks. Owais Shah, Brad Hodge and Kevon Cooper possess the ability to change the course of the game within a short span of time.
Dravid relies on Cooper and Brad Hogg in the bowling department, while Siddharth Trivedi and Amit Singh have also been impressive in the current season. All of them will have to be on top of their games to keep a check on RCB’s run-rate on a flat Jaipur batting track.
On paper, RCB has a much stronger unit and even though the Royals are in good form, Vettori and company will start the game as favourites. However, if the Royals can restrict Gayle and dismiss him early in the innings, they can upset RCB in this crucial fixture. One can safely say that the form of the destructive opening batsman from the Caribbean will decide the fate of this match.
So far, this season has produced a number of nail-biting finishes and considering the sort of cricket both the teams have played so far, fans can definitely expect this encounter to be a mouth-watering one.
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