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Match Preview: Royal Challengers Bangalore v Kolkata Knight Riders - IPL 2017

by Mayukh Bhattacharya Sunday 7 May 2017

Can Virat Kohli help Royal Challengers Bangalore end the season on a high?

©IANS

Match details

May 07, 2017, 04:00pm local time (10:30am GMT)

As a horrendous season nears its close, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will be desperately looking for a change in fortunes when they take on the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). On the other hand the Knight Riders will be looking to return to winning ways and seal their playoffs spot after a couple of defeats.

It is not very often that a lineup that has Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Shane Watson perform as miserably as they have this season. On their day any one of them can win a match on their own but this season they just haven’t got going. Shane Watson and Chris Gayle have both been well below par and it has come to a stage where their participation in the next edition could also be at stake. Cricket can be a great leveler they say and the IPL is a tournament where fame comes and goes pretty quickly. It might make sense for RCB to give their young Indian batsmen a hit rather than persisting with under performing foreign players.

A few low scores with the bat for Sunil Narine has disrupted KKR’s momentum as they have struggled to get off to the quick starts which he was providing them with. Chris Lynn is on the verge of returning and they will be hoping that the return happens sooner given Narine’s diminishing returns with the bat. At the lower end of the batting order, Yusuf Pathan has struggled to get going and with Suryakumar Yadav also having a lean season, they have only been able to drop one of the two senior pros.

Bangalore’s batting worries are much more magnified as compared to Kolkata’s and Robin Uthappa’s return to the eleven should calm down whatever nerves there are. After a disappointing last game, Nathan Coulter-Nile will be looking to have a much improved performance.

Recent Form

RCB – LLLLNR
KKR – LLWWW

Likely XI’s

Adam Milne and Travis Head should come in for Shane Watson and Chris Gayle.

RCB – 1 Travis Head, 2 Virat Kohli (c), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Pawan Negi, 7 Adam Milne, 8 Samuel Badree, 9 Aniket Choudhary, 10 Sreenath Aravind, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Robin Uthappa should come back in for Sheldon Jackson.

KKR – 1 Gautam Gambhir (c), 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Robin Uthappa (wk), 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Yusuf Pathan, 6 Suryakumar Yadav, 7 Colin de Grandhomme, 8 Chris Woakes, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 9, 10 Umesh Yadav, 11 Nathan Coulter-Nile

Trivia

• RCB have been all out four times this season while all other teams combined have only been all out six times
• Sheldon Jackson became the ninth batsman to be dismissed hit wicket in the IPL.
• Manish Pandey and Robin Uthappa have scored 302 and 297 runs respectively outside power play overs this IPL