Some things in life never change. RCB bottling up and losing a game that they should have won is definitely one of them. After the start they had and the way Faf du Plessis, Dinesh Karthik & Virat Kohli played in the last game, they would have felt that they were in a comfortable spot after giving the Punjab Kings a target of 206 runs.
However, they were taken to the cleaners by the Punjab Kings batsman and they lost their cool at crucial junctures and yes it was a good batting display from the Punjab Kings but their bowlers did not do a good job and they lost the plot at some very important points where they should have closed the game.
But all being said, they will be happy that they did have a good outing with the bat even without Maxwell and they will know that it is just a matter of time before their bowling joins the party too. These are just early days into the tournament.
Kolkata Knight Riders on the other hand will be might pleased with the way they have started off their campaign. They played a very good game of cricket in the opener of the tournament against the mighty Mumbai Indians and outclassed them both with the bat and the ball.
Match 6 will be played between these two very strong sides. One hand there is a team that has a very good balance between bat and ball and has some serious depth in both these departments and on the other hand there is RCB – a team that is looking to find that depth and also their most formidable playing XI.
Both sides have some key players missing in this game. KKR are missing players like Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch while RCB are missing Glenn Maxwell, Josh Hazlewood, Jason Behrendorff. Out of all these players, the player that will be missed the most is Glenn Maxwell.
Pitch Report & Ground Report
The pitch at the DY Patil Stadium is generally a good one for batting and the ball comes on nicely to the bat. The teams winning the toss generally prefer to chase as the dew factor also comes into play.
The ground dimensions will matter a lot and the team that factors that into play will have a significant advantage. The square boundaries here are long and 2’s and 3’s will do the trick. The straight boundaries are very short and the batsman should be looking to capitalise on that part of the pitch just like Faf and Virat did the other day.
RCB & KKR Probable lineups
RCB Probable XI
Faf du Plessis (c), Anuj Rawat, Virat Kohli, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Sherfane Rutherford, Wanindu Hasaranga, David Willey, Harshal Patel, Shahbaz Ahmed, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj
KKR Probable XI
Venkatesh Iyer, Ajinkya Rahane, Nitish Rana, Shreyas Iyer (c), Sam Billings, Andre Russell, Sheldon Jackson (wk), Sunil Narine, Shivam Mavi, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy
