Bengaluru, Apr 17: Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s push for a maiden home victory this season will depend on their batters taming the canny Yuzvendra Chahal in the IPL match against a supremely confident Punjab Kings here on Friday.
Chahal, in the company of off-spinner Glenn Maxwell, will have noticed Bengaluru batters’ struggle against slow bowlers R Sai Kishore (2/22, Gujarat Titans), Kuldeep Yadav (2/17) and Vipraj Nigam (2/18, both Delhi Capitals) here, especially once the field was spread out.
Besides, both Chahal and Maxwell will also be armed with their familiarity with the conditions here, courtesy the years spent at the Royal Challengers’ dug out.
Theoretically, RCB camp can take a slight consolation from the fact that they batted first against GT and DC and their spinners took full advantage of a no-dew atmosphere.
But Chahal, who returned to form with a four-wicket haul against Kolkata Knight Riders, and Maxwell, assuming that dull form with the bat will not hinder his inclusion in the eleven on Friday, operate aside from the conditions.
Chahal is a master of lengths rather than of magic balls. The leg-spinner lures with offerings wide of off-stump and the batters need to reach out to the ball for big hits, often resulting in catches in the deep.
He also varies his pace quite cleverly, and the batters need to put that extra effort if they want to hit sixes against him.
Maxwell too is a similar operator, relying on control rather than big turn or dippers.
The Aussie has also found some success against right-handers in white ball formats, and that might come handy for Punjab against their opponents whose batting line-up has an array of right-handers.
RCB have their set of spinners in Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma, giving the hosts hopes of trading some punches of their own.
The Punjab outfit also has capable pace options in Arshdeep Singh and Marco Jansen, though not as decorated as Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the opposition ranks.
Captain Patidar vs Captain Shreyas
On the periphery, Rajat Patidar and Shreyas Iyer have little in common. Iyer has proven credentials, an IPL winning captain with an excellent track record as a batter in this tournament.
Patidar, on the other hand, is a first-time captain in the IPL and does not have a glittering CV as his PBKS counterpart as a batter.
But the dissimilarities end there. They have exuded a reassuring calmness while guiding the team irrespective of outcomes.
Patidar has been authoritative without being overbearing while leading a squad full of super stars such as Virat Kohli and Hazlewood.
He has to be at his tactical and managerial best against a versatile opponent.
A superb player of spin, Patidar will also have to take upon himself the task of nullifying the twin threat of Chahal and Maxwell if the M Chinnaswamy deck retains its slow-paced character.
Iyer too is one of the best players of spin around, the best equipped in Punjab line-up to tackle RCB’s Krunal and Suyash.
As a team, Punjab will be high on confidence after their 16-run win over KKR in a recent low-scoring thriller.
But they will be well aware that RCB, which has depth in batting and bowling, will be a harder opponent to overcome.
Teams (from): Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Rajat Patidar (c), Virat Kohli, Yash Dayal, Josh Hazlewood, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Liam Livingstone, Rasikh Salam, Suyash Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Swapnil Singh, Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Nuwan Thushara, Manoj Bhandage, Jacob Bethel, Devdutt Padikkal, Swastik Chhikara, Lungi Ngidi, Abhinandan Singh, Mohit Rathee.
Punjab Kings: Shreyas Iyer (c), Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Yash Thakur, Suryansh Shedge, Praveen Dubey, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Harpreet Brar, Azmatullah Omarzai, Josh Inglis, Xavier Bartlett, Vishnu Vinod, Aaron Hardie, Kuldeep Sen, Harnoor Singh, Musheer Khan, Pyla Avinash.
Match starts at 7.30 pm. IST. (PTI)
