Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings will renew their intense rivalry after three years when they face off in the Indian Premier League at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday.

MS Dhoni’s team lead their opponents in the overall head-to-head record, both teams have won three games each out of the seven played at the high-scoring Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Chennai have been in rampant form, winning four out of the five games they have played so far. Virat Kohi’s RCB have won just two out of their five matches, and would be eager to maintain momentum after their win against Delhi Daredevils at home last week.

Good news for the hosts is that AB de Villiers is in devastating form, which he exhibited in the last match with a whirlwind unbeaten 39-ball 90 to power his team to a convincing win.

Kohli has also been in good nick, scoring 57 and an unbeaten 92. The spin duo of Yuzuvendra Chahal and Washington Sundar, who have taken five and four wickets each respectively, would be itching to put up a better show. Chennai are struggling against spin this season; they have lost 10 wickets to them and only managed to score at 7.70 runs per over.

Time: 8 pm IST

Venue: MA Chidambaram Stadium

Head to head: Matches – 20, RCB won – 7, CSK won – 12, No Result – 1

At the M Chinnaswamy Stadium: Matches – 7, RCB won – 3, CSK won – 3, No Result – 1

Chennai Super Kings

Stats:

  • The Chennai Super Kings have been unbeaten in matches played on April 25. On this day, they have played six matches and won five; one match against Bangalore in 2012 was washed out.
  • MS Dhoni reserves his best for Bangalore. In eight innings, the former Indian captain has smashed 309 runs at a whopping average of 61.80. His runs have come at an astounding strike rate of 177.58.

Quotes:

“It’s a special match. There is a lot of interest and emotion involved, given the proximity of the two cities. It is an occasion that our players really enjoy,” Chennai head coach Stephen Fleming said.

“We’ve had some great encounters over the years, and tomorrow will be no different. This year, we’ve got a couple more wins than RCB, so we have a little more winning form. But given the quality in the RCB line-up, we expect this to be one of toughest games of the season.”

Squad:

MS Dhoni (c), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Faf du Plessis, Harbhajan Singh, Dwayne Bravo, Shane Watson, Ambati Rayudu, Deepak Chahar, KM Asif, Kanishk Seth, Lungi Ngidi, Dhruv Shorey, Murali Vijay, Sam Billings, Mark Wood, Kshitiz Sharma, Monu Kumar, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Imran Tahir, Karn Sharma, Shardul Thakur, N Jagadeesan, David Willey

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Stats:

  • Kohli is set to take field for his 100th match as captain in Twenty20 cricket. He will be the third Indian to captain in 100 or more matches after MS Dhoni and Gautam Gambhir.  
  • Kohli has scored more runs against Chennai than against any other opposition. He needs to score just 18 more runs to complete 2,000 IPL runs at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Quotes:

“I won’t say it’s the highlight of the season, or the final, or anything like that. We’re just taking it one game at a time,” De Villiers said.

Squad:

Virat Kohli (c), Quinton de Kock (w), Brendon McCullum, AB de Villiers, Sarfaraz Khan, Mandeep Singh, Chris Woakes, Washington Sundar, Kulwant Khejroliya, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Colin de Grandhomme, Moeen Ali, Manan Vohra, Aniket Choudhary, Navdeep Saini, Murugan Ashwin, Pawan Negi, Mohammed Siraj, Corey Anderson, Parthiv Patel, Aniruddha Joshi, Pavan Deshpande, Tim Southee.

(With inputs from IPLT20.com)