The State of Play
After five defeats from their first six matches under new coach Andy Flower, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s prospects of extending their IPL 2024 campaign are already in doubt ahead of the visit of opponents who have won three of their last four.
RCB lost by seven wickets with 27 balls remaining at home to Mumbai Indians on Thursday, with none of their bowlers taking multiple wickets.
Captain Faf du Plessis hit 61 off 40 deliveries, backed by an unbeaten 53 for Dinesh Karthik – who has praised Flower’s impact – and 50 from Rajat Patidar.
No prizes, then, for guessing how Du Plessis assessed his team’s weaknesses after their latest defeat.
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“At the moment, it feels like, from a batting perspective, we have to try to push for 220 to have a chance,” the veteran said.
“From a bowling perspective, we don’t have as many weapons. So unfortunately, it comes down to the batters to make sure that we use our form and our confidence.
“The scores that we put on the board are probably going to be the only way we are going to get into the competition.”
SRH collected a second consecutive win on Tuesday, prevailing by two runs at home to Punjab Kings with the help of 64 from player of the match Nitish Kumar Reddy.
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Head coach Daniel Vettori, who played for Bangalore and coached them between 2014 and 2018, expects a response from his former team.
“RCB will obviously keep learning from what’s happened in the previous games and they’re going to come out pretty aggressive,” predicted Vettori.
“We’re going to be under a lot of pressure as a bowling unit for how aggressive they are going to be.
“So we need to find ways to counter that and then keep up with our batting form, which has been really good.”
It was nice catching up with the Sunrisers. Same time, same place tomorrow then! 😉🤝
This is @bigbasket_com presents RCB Bold Diaries. 📽️#PlayBold #ನಮ್ಮRCB #IPL2024 #RCBvSRH pic.twitter.com/TeYc8fOjDk
— Royal Challengers Bengaluru (@RCBTweets) April 14, 2024
Expected Line-ups
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis (c), Virat Kohli, Will Jacks, Rajat Patidar, Glenn Maxwell, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Mahipal Lomror, Reece Topley, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, Thangarasu Natarajan
How to watch
Sky have the rights to show the IPL to UK viewers in 2024 and will broadcast every game live. Monday’s match will be shown on Sky Sports Cricket from 2.50pm BST.
In India, the games can be streamed on the Jio Cinema app and website. They are also available across the Star Sports Network.
Gracing your feed with some innovative hitting ft. Rahul 🔥👌 pic.twitter.com/kLQDJnEESm
— SunRisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) April 14, 2024
Prediction
The involvement of heavy hitters of the calibre of Virat Kohli – the leading run-scorer in the IPL – and Du Plessis gives RCB the power to overcome their obvious flaw.
They are hardly facing a shallow batting line-up, though, and Heinrich Klaasen will be among those anticipating a big score here. SRH’s status as favourites is justified.
