Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bangalore
Mumbai Indians' stand-in skipper Kieron Pollard opted to bowl first in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday in their IPL 2020 game against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Rohit Sharma, down with hamstring injury, will once again miss out on yet another IPL game. Mumbai Indians remained unchanged while RCB opted for as many as three changes.
"We will field first. Hopefully we will see what happens but we have to come out and play good cricket. In the last game 190 odd was chased down, and don't think it would change much and hopefully we can chase it down later on. We are playing the same team," said Pollard.
RCB skipper Virat Kohli seemed confident at losing the toss, for he was looking forward to bat first at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium. One big change that RCB made for the game was Josh Phillipe was brought in place of Aaron Finch.
"Pretty happy with batting first, exactly what we wanted to do. Quite a few changes tonight. Saini misses out, Shivam Dube comes in. Josh Phillipe comes in for Aaron Finch and Dale Steyn comes in for Moeen Ali. Seemed pretty one-sided for the first couple of weeks and the teams in the lower half are fighting hard and it's important for us, we have been playing some consistent cricket and we have played well together as a team and tonight we are looking to," Kohli said.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (Playing XI): Devdutt Padikkal, Josh Philippe(w), Virat Kohli(c), AB de Villiers, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Shivam Dube, Chris Morris, Washington Sundar, Dale Steyn, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal
Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Ishan Kishan, Quinton de Kock(w), Suryakumar Yadav, Saurabh Tiwary, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard(c), Krunal Pandya, James Pattinson, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
It will be a top-of-the-table clash with both teams on 14 points after 11 games, yet it is Mumbai Indians who are better placed than RCB by virtue of their superior NRR of +1.252. Hence a win will all but certain their place in the playoffs. RCB, with an NRR of +0.092, will only move a step closer to the playoffs if they win on Wednesday, but have to win one more to certain their place in the next stage of IPL 2020.
