Big image: Can Rahul boss his favorite opponents once more?
Rahul additionally enjoys a superb report in opposition to RCB’s bowling spearhead, Josh Hazlewood. Not solely is Rahul the one batter to have scored greater than 100 in opposition to Hazlewood within the IPL, however he is additionally scored extra runs in opposition to the Australian fast than anybody else in all T20s.
RCB, with 5 wins in seven video games, are comfortably second on the factors desk, with a recreation in hand in comparison with the 2 different groups on 10 factors. DC, although, have a four-point hole to bridge with the highest 4, and will probably be eager on staying within the combine for the playoffs spots, having misplaced 4 of their final 5 video games.
Form information
Royal Challengers Bengaluru WLWWL (final 5 accomplished matches, most up-to-date first)
Delhi Capitals LLWLL
Key query
Team information: Salt nonetheless out injured, Ngidi unsure
Delhi Capitals XII (possible): 1 KL Rahul (wk), 2 Pathum Nissanka, 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Sameer Rizvi, 5 Tristan Stubbs, 6 David Miller, 7 Axar Patel (capt), 8 Kyle Jamieson/Dushmantha Chameera, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 T Natarajan, 11 Mukesh Kumar, 12 Auqib Nabi.
RCB opener Phil Salt missed their final recreation, in opposition to Gujarat Titans, with damage and their batting coach Dinesh Karthik confirmed that he’s nonetheless unavailable. That means Jacob Bethell ought to get one other recreation on the prime and RCB are prone to keep unchanged.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru XII (possible): 1 Virat Kohli, 2 Jacob Bethell, 3 Devdutt Padikkal, 4 Rajat Patidar (capt), 5 Jitesh Sharma (wk), 6 Tim David, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Romario Shepherd, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Rasikh Salam, 11 Josh Hazlewood, 12 Suyash Sharma.
In the highlight: Pathum Nissanka and Virat Kohli
Stats and triva
- Bhuvneshwar Kumar has strong information in opposition to DC’s prime three. He’s dismissed Rahul and Nitish Rana solely twice every, however they solely strike at 109 and 122 in opposition to him respectively. He has additionally received the higher of Nissanka thrice in 4 innings, conceding simply 22 runs in 24 balls.
- Jitesh Sharma has received out to Axar Patel twice in 19 balls, scoring simply 15 runs in opposition to the left-arm spinner.
- Kohli is 72 runs away from reaching 400 runs in an IPL season for the eleventh time. The closest to him are Shikhar Dhawan, David Warner and Suresh Raina, who did it 9 instances every.
Pitch and Conditions
This recreation will probably be performed on Pitch No. 5, the place GT made 210 earlier this season and DC fell quick by one run in a last-ball thriller. In the 4 video games performed on this mixed-soil pitch since IPL 2025, the typical first-innings rating has been 197, so you may count on one other high-scoring match.
Quotes
“The bowlers are challenged, isn’t it? 200, 220 runs, teams seem to be getting it and it almost feels like 220 is the old 180 or something like that. So it is a challenging situation for any bowling coach and any bowler. So obviously as a bowling unit, you need to be very aware of what’s happening and how the scores have increased and how you need to be thinking as a bowler and without revealing too much, I’d say so far we are trying our best to do a good job.”
RCB batting coach Dinesh Karthik on a troublesome life for bowlers
Abhimanyu Bose is a sub-editor with ESPNcricinfo
