Kolkata Knight Riders will face a completely worn-out Royal Challengers Bangalore at Bengaluru on Sunday. Kolkata, who suffered losses against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rising Pune Supergiant in the last two matches, need two wins out of the remaining three matches to seal their berth in the play-off.
The two-time champions are second on the table with 14 points in 11 matches, followed by RPS and Sunrisers at 14 and 13 points respectively. During their last meeting, KKR thrashed Bangalore by 82 runs after bowling them out for 49 — the lowest score in Indian Premier League history. For Bangalore, a win seems to be a far-fetched thought. They will hopefully want to sign off on a positive note and will look to beat Kolkata after their embarrassing defeat in their last clash between both the sides. For Kolkata, victory will all but their seal their berth in the playoffs. They will face Delhi and Mumbai in their remaining clashes in the group stage.
Time: 4 pm
Venue: M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru
TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD Channels
Head-to-head
Played: 19
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 9
Kolkata Knight Riders: 10
At Bengaluru
Played: 7
Bangalore: 4
Kolkata: 3
Royal Challengers Bangalore
- Bangalore have lost their last five matches – the joint most for them in any season of the IPL. They had lost five in the inaugural season in 2008.
- RCB have now been bowled out in four matches this season – that’s the most they’ve been bowled out in a season.
Royal Challengers Bangalore squad: Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Vishnu Vinod, Sreenath Arvind, Kedar Jadhav (WK), Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Iqbal Abdulla, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tymal Mills, Aniket Chaudhary, Praveen Dubey, Billy Stanlake.
“Tomorrow is a 4 pm game, and we saw the game last night and we saw that Bangalore’s spinners did well, as did Axar Patel and Glenn Maxwell. From that point of view, spin bowling is going to play a big role and our spinners are looking forward to that challenge,” said Simon Katich, on the newly-laid wicket at the Chinnaswamy.
Kolkata Knight Riders
- Gautam Gambhir has scored the most runs against Bangalore in the IPL – 630 runs at 35.00 from 18 innings. Virat Kohli has scored just two fifties in 16 innings against KKR.
- Knight Riders’ batting is heavily dependent on their top four. Their middle and lower order have scored at an average of 14.52 and a strike-rate of 115.97, the second-poorest among all teams. Bangalore have the worst.
Kolkata Knight Riders squad: Gautam Gambhir (C), Darren Bravo, Yusuf Pathan, Sunil Narine, Robin Uthappa (WK), Umesh Yadav, Suryakumar Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Trent Boult, Piyush Chawla, Nathan Coulter Nile, Colin De Grandhomme, Rishi Dhawan, Sayan Ghosh, Shaikb Al Hasan, Sheldon Jackson, Ishank Jaggi, Kuldeep Yadav, Chris Woakes, Chris Lynn, Manish Pandey.
“It’s disheartening, I don’t know what to say about games like these anymore. Happening far too many times for our liking, something we are not able to change. Anything we do is not working out. The whole squad is playing in that zone. We are not able to get a big score,” said Virat Kohli, RCB captain.