Defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad travel to Bangalore to face the Royal Challengers Bangalore today at the Chinnaswamy stadium. The two teams faced each other at Hyderabad for the first match of the VIVO IPL 2017, where SRH secured a convincing victory to stamp their class on last year’s runners-up. Since the first match, the fortunes of the two teams have diverged quite radically. SRH are placed comfortably at third in the points table, with 4 wins in their 7 matches, although their last-ball defeat to Rising Pune Supergiants will sting a little. RCB, on the other hand, are bottom of the league with a mere 4 points. RCB are also hurting from their embarrassing defeat to the Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday night. Virat Kohli’s bowlers came at KKR brilliantly to bundle them out for 131, but in an astonishing second half, RCB themselves were bundled out for 49 – the lowest total posted in the IPL – with not one batsman getting past single figures. With half of league matches, RCB have a minimal margin of error if they are to make it to the playoffs, especially because the league is packed in the middle of the points tally.
Interestingly, SRH are yet to win an away match, so this might be RCB’s opportunity to exact some revenge for last year’s final, and make a recovery on their way to the playoffs.
When
25 April 2017, 2000 Hrs IST
Where
M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru
Head to Head
Overall: Matches played – 10, Royal Challengers Bangalore Won – 4, Sunrisers Hyderabad Won – 6
Since 2016: Matches played – 3, Royal Challengers Bangalore Won – 0, Sunrisers Hyderabad Won – 3
Likely XI :
Likely XI Royal Challengers Bangalore
1 Virat Kohli (capt), 2 Chris Gayle, 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Mandeep Singh, 5 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 6 Stuart Binny, 7 Pawan Negi, 8 Samuel Badree, 9 Tymal Mills, 10 S Aravind, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
Likely XI Sunrisers Hyderabad
1 David Warner (capt), 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Moises Henriques, 5 Yuvraj Singh, 6 Naman Ojha (wk), 7 Deepak Hooda, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Siddarth Kaul/Ashish Nehra, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Bhuvneshwar Kumar
Predictions :
- Although Chinnaswamy has had the highest run rate (8.61) amongst all the grounds before 2017, this year it has had the lowest. We expect a similar low-scoring match with emphasis on the bowling performances instead of piling on runs.
- SRH’s Moises Henriques has scored three half centuries already, and has 193 runs in six innings. He will be a key man in today’s fixture for the visiting side.
- Ashish Nehra has dismisses RCB skipper six times in the last 54 balls. If RCB are to pull off a victory today, their captain will have to fire, and Nehra will be the key bowler SRH skipper Warner will look to stop the Kohli fire.
- SRH have not won an away match yet, losing their last match at Pune in last-ball thriller. RCB will look to use this to their advantage today.
- SRH are favorites to win this one, with almost everyone in their team doing well and Kohli’s RCB in disarray. However, we never know what heroics players like Kohli, Gayle and ABD can pull to blow the opposition away.
