In the first day game of the season, a confident Royal Challengers Bangalore are all set to face the Kolkata Knight Riders. in Chennai. RCB were the only team to score under 7 runs per over in the middle overs (7 to 15). Although Glenn Maxwell has been a good addition to the middle order in that regard, the problem hasn't entirely gone away for Kohli and Co. In the two games this season, RCB have totalled 60/3 (vs MI) and 56/3 (vs SRH) in the middle overs. Out of that, Kohli has contributed 13 off 17 (vs MI) and 14 off 15 balls (vs SRH) and hit a total of one boundary in that phase across both the innings.
RCB will want him to go harder at the top during the powerplay overs. In the last edition, RCB beat KKR by convincing margins in both the league games, including the one time they restricted Morgan and Co. to 88 in Abu Dhabi, and caused a massive dent of -3.430 in their net run rate. Kolkata Knight Riders are coming off a despairing loss to Mumbai Indians. Nitish Rana has been batting brilliantly, whereas Andre Russel is taking wickets at the death overs. The rest of the team needs to fire in this game. The track has a history of supporting spinners. The average 1st innings batting score in the IPL 2021 games played here is 162 runs.
Probable XI: Virat Kohli(c), Devdutt Padikkal, Shahbaz Ahmed, Glenn Maxwell, AB de Villiers(w), Washington Sundar, Daniel Christian, Kyle Jamieson, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal.
Probable XI: Nitish Rana, Shubman Gill, Rahul Tripathi, Eoin Morgan(c), Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik(w), Shakib Al Hasan, Pat Cummins, Harbhajan Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy.
