IPL 2014: Match 2 - New-look Delhi Daredevils take on batting giants RCB

Kohli, Gayle and AB de Villiers present a tough challenge for Delhi Daredevils

The IPL season began with a cracker yesterday as the Kolkata Knight Riders thrashed the Mumbai Indians with a 40-run win, something that the Mumbai Indians aren’t used to. That unusual start of the IPL season marks the beauty of the T20 format and the excitement of having new-look sides.

We now move on to the second match in the IPL, as the Delhi Daredevils take on the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Although RCB seem to have the upper hand due to the unfortunate injury of Kevin Pietersen, this match is expected to go “down to the wire” as Ravi Shastri always loves to say. The fans of both sides will have a lot to look forward to since both sides have a set of new players which makes it all the more unpredictable.

The Delhi Daredevils will be a bit worried since their captain, Kevin Pietersen is set to miss the first game. This has called for their stand-in captain, Dinesh Karthik to take up some responsibility. Although he hasn’t been in the best of forms, he has had experience in captaining the Tamil Nadu Ranji side a couple of times and will be waiting to make an impact on the game and take on this added responsibility.

Delhi fans will be hoping that their newly acquired squad can do some magic on the field as they will be looking for a turnaround from last year’s IPL. DK will have to clearly look at his options and select the best team combination. He will have a variety of fast bowlers to pick from as they have a clear mix of local and foreign talent. A perfect mix of players to suit the UAE tracks is what the Delhi Daredevils need to start their season with a win.

One simply can’t talk about RCB without talking about the humongous batting potential they have. With hard hitters in Gayle and Yuvraj, perennially consistent batsmen in Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers, as well as the young Indian talents of Parthiv Patel and Vijay Zol, RCB seem to have the strongest batting line-up in the IPL.

With a well settled batting line-up in hand, RCB look favourites to win this match but their weak point from their previous seasons remains their bowling. Although they have a good bowling line-up, it is no match to the batting strength they possess. Their bowling has to step up this year if they want to dominate this season of the IPL since, any batting line up will have a good time on the flat UAE Pitches especially in the T20 Format.

Expected Line-ups:

RCB: Chris Gayle, Parthiv Patel, Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers, Yuvraj Singh, Vijay Zol, Shadab Jakati, Muttiah Muralitharan, Ravi Rampaul, Varun Aaron, Sandeep Warrier

DD: Murali Vijay, Quinton De Kock, Ross Taylor, Dinesh Karthik, JP Duminy, Kedar Jadhav, Rahul Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammad Shami, Wayne Parnell/Nathan Coulter-Nile

With all said and done, this game is expected to be a cracker with both the line ups look strong on paper. Delhi will have to bat well without Kevin Pietersen and also bowl their hearts out to the RCB Batsmen if they want to win this game. RCB, with the batting they possess, will have to bowl well to match their batting efforts. Lets wait and see who will have the last laugh.