The Royal Challengers Bangalore will be looking to establish their supremacy in the VIVO IPL 2016 when they take on the Gujarat Lions at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot. It has been quite a topsy-turvy season for the Challengers this year as they have struggled to win successive matches and are placed third in the league table. Gujarat, on the other hand, were on a roll with 3 back-to-back wins but were stopped in their tracks by SRH in their previous game. The stakes are high for both teams in this clash as GL want to get back to winning ways while RCB would like to carry on getting victories under their belt.
Let's take a look at the team RCB may field in their encounter with the Gujarat Lions:
Batting
The biggest strength for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2016 edition of the IPL has undoubtedly been their batting. The two pillars of RCB's batting, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, have dominated bowling attacks and are perched right on top of the list of highest run-getters. Kohli is the current Orange Cap holder with 267 runs while de Villiers has scored 249 runs.
Together, the duo has made up for the absence of the dangerous Chris Gayle, who had flown back home for the birth of his baby. The rest of the batsmen haven't got too much opportunity; however, the likes of Sarfaraz Khan and Shane Watson have made an impact with some quick runs towards the end.
The batting will definitely get tested if the Kohli-de Villiers partnership fails to fire in a particular match.
All-rounders
The RCB squad has plenty of all-rounders in the form of Shane Watson, David Wiese, Stuart Binny and Parvez Rasool among others. However, barring Watson, none of the others have had much to do in the 2016 IPL till now. Binny is the only one among the others who has played 3 matches, but he, too, has batted just once and bowled just 3 overs.
At some stage of the tournament, Bangalore will require the all-rounders to come good and produce the goods in both departments.
Bowling
RCB's new recruit this season, Shane Watson, has been quite brilliant with the ball as he has picked up 6 wickets in 4 matches. Paceman Kane Richardson, however, has made the biggest impact for them as he claimed 4 scalps in just 2 games including best figures of 3 for 13 against RPS in a winning cause.
The other pacemen in the squad such as Harshal Patel, Varun Aaron and Sreenath Aravind have been ordinary at best. Even the spinners have not done their job very well, giving away too many runs and failing to pick up wickets. Their best tweaker so far has been Iqbal Abdulla with 3 wickets in 2 matches.
In order to challenge some of the other strong teams in the race for the IPL playoffs, the Bangalore team will have to improve on their bowling.
Probable Playing XI – Virat Kohli (c), KL Rahul (wk), AB de Villiers, Shane Watson, Sarfaraz Khan, Mandeep Singh, Stuart Binny, Harshal Patel, Kane Richardson, Tabraiz Shamsi, Iqbal Abdulla.
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