Their chances of making the playoffs still hanging by a thread, Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on table-toppers Sunrisers Hyderabad in another must-win Indian Premier League encounter on Thursday.

The consecutive victories over Delhi Daredevils and Kings XI Punjab have revived RCB’s hopes, while SRH has been on a roll, having won nine matches out of 12.

RCB are still languishing at the second last position on the table, while SRH are on top of the table with 18 points.

Virat Kohli’s RCB has endured a tough season, having lost seven of its 12 matches so far but the recent turnaround has rekindled hopes of a possible shot at the playoffs berth provided some other results go the team’s way.

Advertisement

Given their consistent run, SRH would be expected to pull it off tomorrow but RCB, having rediscovered some form, might just spring a surprise.

Match starts: 8pm
At M Chinnaswamy Stadium

Head to Head

Overall: Matches: 11, RCB won: 4, SRH won: 7

Stats & Trivia

  • 182 is the average first innings total at Chinnaswamy Stadium in this edition of the IPL
  • The last four encounters between the two sides have been won by SRH. This includes their win in the final of the 2016 season.
  • No one has scored more runs against SRH than Virat Kohli. The RCB skipper has scored 473 runs against this side in 10 innings.

Our bowlers have adapted better than other teams to the prevalent conditions in this IPL. Credit goes to their ability to assess those conditions and exploit those conditions the best.  

— SRH head coach Tom Moody

 We have to give ourselves the opportunity. Kohli has spoken to the team about the need to be desperate as we are desperate to win. We should be carefree, that’s when we play our best.   

— RCB head coach Daniel Vettori

Teams

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (captain), 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.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (C ), Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddharth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Shreevats Goswami, Ricky Bhui, Basil Thampi, T Natarajan, Sachin Baby, Bipul Sharma, Mehdi Hasan, Tanmay Agarwal, Alex Hales, Carlos Brathwaite, Rashid Khan, Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Nabi and Chris Jordan.