Bangalore, Apr 16: Strong contenders Royal Challengers Bangalore face a woefully out-of-form Delhi Daredevils as they resume their IPL campaign here following a heart-breaking defeat against Chennai Super Kings.
A big no-ball by R P Singh in dying minutes of the match had deprived Bangalore from an exciting win. It was second close defeat for Bangalore, having lost another thriller via Super Over to Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Hosts Bangalore are expected to face some good resistance from Delhi since the visitors are the only side to not have won a single game this season and would do everything to get on board.
Having lost all four games, Delhi have no option but to go all out as one more defeat would make their journey more tougher, so they will throw anything and everything they have against Bangalore.
Skipper Virat Kohli and explosive Chris Gayle have done extremely well for the side so far but Bangalore need other batsmen to fire and bowlers need to be more efficient.
Over-reliance on top-order may hurt them. Building partnerships is the way forward for Bangalore so they need Mayank Agarwal and Karun Nair to bat well in the middle order.
They also need their other foreign recruits such as Tillakratne Dilshan and Daniel Christian to stand up and counted.
As far Bangalore's bowling is concerned, they have bowled well as a unit but struggled in death overs. This was quite evident in the match against CSK where Vinay Kumar, Ravi Rampaul and R P Singh bowled far too many length balls and in process conceded 53 runs in last five overs.
The team may consider making some changes and pick from among Abhimanyu Mithun, Abhinav Mukund, Andrew McDonald, Christopher Barnwell, Daniel Vettori, Harshal Patel, K P Appanna, Pankaj Singh and P Prasanth, who have warmed the bench so far.
It would be crucial for Bangalore Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan gets hi mojo back and Murali Kartik better his performance.
