The wash-up: Virat Kohli's men head to Rajkot on Wednesday to meet fellow cellar-dwellars Gujarat in a must-win clash to keep hope alive for a playoffs berth, with coach Dan Vettori floating mass changes in the offing for the struggling RCB side.
The result: Rising Pune Supergiant 8-161 (Tripathi 31, Milne 2-29) defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore 9-134 (De Villiers 29, Stokes 3-18) by 27 runs. The place is at the bottom of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2017 table. Tahir was brilliant as ever finishing his quota of four overs with one wicket and giving away just 27 runs.
Andrew Tye- He was an absolute stunner with the ball when he not only secured a hat-trick on his debut in IPL last Friday, but also claimed a five-wicket haul with the figure standing at 5/17.
These two quick wickets brought Steven Smith and Dhoni to the middle and a partnership slowly flourished.
Suresh Raina: We'd like to bowl first. Munaf Patel played his first game yesterday and took one wicket while Kerala seamer Basil Thampi was also impressive against Mumbai. The team is not being helped by the fact that their overseas all-rounder, Shane Watson, has not done anything of note with bat and ball; the Australian may have a very impressive record in global cricket and in the IPL over the years, but so far this season he has scored at less than a run-a-ball and has leaked runs at 10.30 runs per over.
Mourinho favourite Ibrahimovic has carried Man Utd
There were four goals in the opening 23 minutes, with teenager Tom Davies giving Everton the lead after just 30 seconds. Jose Mourinho has endured a hugely frustrating endeavour trying to steer United into the top four this season.
Both matches in Rajkot so far have been won by teams chasing, so - and this is assuming the pitch will be a similar one to those matches - RCB know they need to put a big, big score on the board.
The RCB are now languishing at the bottom of the IPL points table with a solitary win from their five outings. The injury-struck RCB have not been able to strike a winning combination yet. With Kohli coming back in, Gayle and Watson have been playing switcheroo in the RCB batting lineup.
In the bowling department, RCB looked much better than the Lions, with seamers like Tymal Mills, Billy Stanlake, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sreenath Arvind and Samuel Badree.
RCB has now lost four out of their five games. GL made three changes, bringing in Aaron Finch - who missed the last game due to a freaky reason of lost kit bag - Shivil Kaushik and Dhawal Kulkarni in place of Jason Roy, Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel.
Comments