Match 5: Royal Challengers Bangalore v Delhi Daredevils at Bengaluru, Apr 8, 2017
Chinnaswamy Stadium ( Capacity 40,000)
Saturday, 8th April
20:00 hrs IST
RCB who lost the first game against defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad by a wide margin, are looking to bounce back and aim for their first win of the IPL season 10 when they take on Delhi Daredevils. RCB are struggling without their regular skipper Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and KL Rahul. Further, Sarfaraz Khan will most likely be unavailable for the season after hurting himself on the field during a practice match. Shane Watson, who looked out of touch would conitnue to lead the side as an interim captain. However, Bangalore would be hoping that their destructive batsmen Chris Gayle and Watson come good against a depleted Delhi on Saturday. On the other hand, the Daredevils, who have been the worst performing side in the nine previous IPL seasons, would be desperately looking to get a few wins early on to bolster their fragile confidence. The team seems to be a composed side this year, but they have a lot of bad news with several key players missing because of injuries. Overall under the mentorship of Rahul Dravid, who is a local boy, it is definitely a balanced side that we all will look up to.
Team News:
Chris Gayle and Mandeep Singh will again open the innings with Travis Head at number three, Kedar Jadhav at four and Shane Watson coming in at five. In the bowling department, they would depend on Tymal Mills, an expensive buy at the IPL 2017 auction, and Yuzvendra Chahal.
For Delhi, they have bad news with injuries to some of their star players. They have lost South Africans Quinton De Kock and Jean-Paul Duminy for the entire tournament, affecting their balance. While Duminy pulled out citing personal reasons, de Kock had suffered a tendon damage on his right index finger during the Test series against New Zealand. In bowling, captain Zaheer Khan who will be leading the attack, but he has not been active this season raising some questions. Angelo Mathews will be missing a couple of matches due to injury. Delhi would like to capitalize on Carlos Brathwaite (WI) and Pat Cummins (Aus) and aggressive New Zealander Corey Anderson to lend some experience and aggression.
Ideal Playing XI
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Chris Gayle, Mandeep Singh, Shane Watson (capt), Kedar Jadhav (wk), Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Stuart Binny, Tymal Mills, Sreenath Aravind, Aniket Choudhary, Yuzvendra Chahal, Pawan Negi, Harshal Patel, Adam Milne, Iqbal Abdulla, Samuel Badree,
Delhi Daredevils: Zaheer Khan (capt), Mohammad Shami, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson, Karun Nair, Rishabh Pant, CV Milind, Khaleel Ahmed, Pratyush Singh, Murugan Ashwin, Aditya Tare, Shashank Singh, Ankit Bawane, Corey Anderson, Pat Cummins,Carlos Brathwaite
Pitch and Weather report: Bengaluru is a pleasant city especially in the evenings and the weather is predicted to not cause any problem. The pitch is great batting track which will make the game a high scoring one.
Match prediction: The RCB will look the dominate the depleted Daredevils and are expected to be favorites with a win probability of 55%