IPL April 11 2013: On a high after extracting revenge against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Royal Challengers Bangalore will look to continue their winning streak when they take on Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL match here tomorrow.
Led by Virat Kohli, RCB trounced Hyderabad by 19 runs on Monday and the RCB skipper will be hoping that his men will not go haywire after making a good start, which was their story until the last IPL.
On the other hand, after losing to Rajasthan Royals in their previous encounter, KKR will look for a reversal when they play their third match against the southern powerhouse.
RCB were impressive against Hyderabad and Kohli and R.P. Singh starred with bat and bowl, respectively.
RCB were bolstered by R.P. Singh’s three for 27, after Kohli notched up a blazing unbeaten 93 off 47 balls. He struck 11 boundaries and four sixes in an innings that helped Bangalore register a win with 14 balls to spare.
RCB will be hoping to get a rollicking start from Gayle, who failed to make an impact in the last two games. AB de Villiers will hope to fire after scoring 15 vital runs in a 49-run partnership with his skipper against Hyderabad.
The rest of the batting too has solid names such as Tillakaratne Dilshan, Andrew McDonald, Mayank Agarwal and Moises Henriques apart from Arun Karthik and Vinay Kumar.
In the absence of RCB’s bowling spearhead Zaheer Khan, Vinay Kumar has led the pack admirably. Muttiah Muralitharan and Murali Karthik would like to carry their magic of prudence and frugality into the next game.
KKR, in contrast, have failed to capitalise on their good start having lost their last match to Rajasthan by 19 runs chasing a rather easy target of 145.
In their encounter with the RCB, KKR will look for a better batting performance and build partnerships to bounce back.
Since then the two teams have met on nine occasions and RCB have managed to even the scales, winning five to leave the head to head at five apiece. In the last IPL season, KKR won both their league matches against RCB by convincing margins.
RCB will hop across to neighbouring Chennai for their away fixture against the Chennai Super Kings on April 13 while the Kolkata Knight Riders will head back home to host Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 14.
Squad:
Royal Challengers Bangalore XI: 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 Chris Gayle, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Moises Henriques, 6 Arun Karthik (wk), 7 Vinay Kumar, 8 Murali Kartik, 9 Jaidev Unadkat, 10 RP Singh, 11 Muttiah Muralitharan
Kolkata Knight Riders XI: 1 Manvinder Bisla (wk), 2 Gautam Gambhir (capt), 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 Manoj Tiwary, 5 Eoin Morgan, 6 Yusuf Pathan, 7 Laxmi Ratan Shukla, 8 Rajat Bhatia, 9 Brett Lee, 10 L Balaji, 11 Sunil Narine
