RCB batters look to rise above PBKS’ spin challenge

Bengaluru: Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s push for a maiden home victory this season will depend on their batters taming the canny Yuzvendra Chahal in the IPL match against a supremely confident Punjab Kings here on Friday. Chahal, in the company of off-spinner Glenn Maxwell, will have noticed Bengaluru batters’ struggle against slow bowlers R Sai Kishore (2/22, Gujarat Titans), Kuldeep Yadav (2/17) and Vipraj Nigam (2/18, both Delhi Capitals) here, especially once the field was spread out. Besides, both Chahal and Maxwell will also be armed with their familiarity with the conditions here, courtesy the years spent at the Royal Challengers’ dug out.

Theoretically, RCB camp can take a slight consolation from the fact that they batted first against GT and DC and their spinners took full advantage of a no-dew atmosphere. But Chahal, who returned to form with a four-wicket haul against Kolkata Knight Riders, and Maxwell, assuming that dull form with the bat will not hinder his inclusion in the eleven on Friday, operate aside from the conditions.

Chahal is a master of lengths rather than of magic balls. The leg-spinner lures with offerings wide of off-stump and the batters need to reach out to the ball for big hits, often resulting in catches in the deep. He also varies his pace quite cleverly, and the batters need to put that extra effort if they want to hit sixes against him. Maxwell too is a similar operator, relying on control rather than big turn or dippers. The Aussie has also found some success against right-handers in white ball formats, and that might come handy for Punjab against their opponents whose batting line-up has an array of right-handers.

Teams

Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Rajat Patidar (c), Virat Kohli, Yash Dayal, Josh Hazlewood, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Liam Livingstone, Rasikh Salam, Suyash Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Swapnil Singh, Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Nuwan Thushara, Manoj Bhandage, Jacob Bethel, Devdutt Padikkal, Swastik Chhikara, Lungi Ngidi, Abhinandan Singh, Mohit Rathee.

Punjab Kings: Shreyas Iyer (c), Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Yash Thakur, Suryansh Shedge, Praveen Dubey, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Harpreet Brar, Azmatullah Omarzai, Josh Inglis, Xavier Bartlett, Vishnu Vinod, Aaron Hardie, Kuldeep Sen, Harnoor Singh, Musheer Khan, Pyla Avinash.