Seventh and eighth meet on Tuesday in Rajkot as the Gujarat Lions take on the Royal Challengers Bangalore with both teams desperately seeking a win. Both RCB and Gujarat have only one win to show so far, though Bangalore have played a game extra. With Brendon McCullum, Suresh Raina, Aaron Finch and Dwayne Smith on one side and Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle on the other, it promises to be a clash of the big hitters.
Time: 8 pm
Venue: Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Rajkot
TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD channels
Results in 2016
Played: 3
Gujarat Lions won: 1
Royal Challengers Bangalore won: 2
Gujarat Lions
- Will Dwayne Bravo come back into the team? The Caribbean all-rounder has been out since last December with a hamstring injury. However, he has joined the Lions and posted a video of himself training with the team.
- Ravindra Jadeja hasn’t had the best of starts to the IPL after his exploits in the whites in the long home season. He’s returned figures of 1/40 and 0/34 but will fancy his chances against AB de Villiers.
- The match also pits the two highest IPL run-scorers against each other. With 4234 runs, Suresh Raina is marginally ahead of Virat Kohli at 4200.
Squad: Suresh Raina (c), Ravindra Jadeja, James Faulkner, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Dwayne Smith, Dinesh Karthik, Dhawal Kulkarni, Praveen Kumar, Andrew Tye, Ishan Kishan, Pradeep Sangwan, Shivil Koushik, Shadab Bashir Jakati, Jaydev Shah, Manpreet Gony, Nathu Singh, Jason Roy, Munaf Patel, Chirag Suri, Akshdeep Nath, Basil Thampi, Shubham Agarwal, Tejas Baroka, Pratham Singh, Shelley Sanjay Kumar Shaurya, Dwayne Bravo.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
- Who are Royal Challengers Bangalore’s four overseas players? AB de Villiers is obviously one but what about the rest? RCB still don’t seem to know and they’ve shuffled Chris Gayle, Shane Watson and Tymal Mills around. This uncertainty has affected the team’s performance and they’re languishing at the bottom of the table.
- The two hat-trick bowlers of the IPL 2017 will come face to face in the same match. Samuel Badree’s dream figures of 4/7 was followed by a more middling performance of 1/32 while Andrew Tye’s 5/17 was followed by 2/34. Both the bowlers will want to prove that those performances were not a flash in the pan.
- Virat Kohli has lost the two matches he’s captained since he returned from the shoulder injury. It’s a statistic he’ll want to change and fast.
“If we play like this, we don’t deserve to win.”
Virat Kohli after RCB’s loss to Rising Pune Supergiant on Sunday
Squad: Virat Kohli (captain), AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Iqbal Abdulla, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Pawan Negi, Tymal Mills, Aniket Choudhary, Praveen Dubey, Billy Stanlake, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sarfaraz Khan, S Aravind.
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