RCB take last shot against party crashers Deccan

Deccan Chargers vs Royal Challengers Bangalore
Sunday, May 20th 4 pm
Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad

Royal Challengers Bangalore face the Deccan Chargers for their last shot of making it to the playoffs of the penultimate league game of IPL 5 at Hyderabad on Sunday afternoon.

After a season of ups and downs, all the work done in the 15 previous games comes to rest on the result of this 16th one.

RCB is in a good frame of mind having posted their highest total of the season at Delhi. The bowlers got the early breakthroughs and defended despite an out of the blue innings from Ross Taylor, holding their nerves to seal the game before the final over began.

The flat track at the Kotla saw Chris Gayle break many records and Virat Kohli spend time in the middle but the rest of the batsmen will surely be counted upon in case Dale Steyn gets a breakthrough for DC early. Gayle played out a maiden at Delhi yet more than made up for it later. If he sees off Steyn he will definitely try to maximize off the bowling of the DC leg-spinner Amit Mishra and DC’s domestic pacers Aashish Reddy, Manpreet Gony and Veer Pratap Singh/Anand Rajan.

Tillakaratne Dilshan, Mayank Agarwal, AB de Villiers and even Saurabh Tiwary have played innings of note so far and will be depended upon.

However, the DC bowlers put up a good, disciplined show against the Rajasthan Royals on Friday to knock them out of the IPL, consistently choking. The RCB batsmen will have to be careful of posting a below par total since DC’s batsmen are in great form.

Shikhar Dhawan is the second highest run getter in the league at the moment, Cameron White has hit devastating knocks, the U-19 player Akshath Reddy was impressive against RR, Duminy and Parthiv can be dangerous. The strength of the DC line up also depends on which one of the four overseas players Daniel Harris, Sangakkara, Daniel Christian or Chris Lynn plays. Lynn is a reputed hitter from Queensland, Sangakkara and Christian can be destructive and the Sri Lankan may play just to tackle Muralitharan.

The team managed to post 182/1 against this same RCB attack at Bangalore a few weeks ago and the bowlers will have to deliver a better effort this time to seal their path to the playoffs.

Four of the best bowling efforts of the season have come in the last four games but even that includes a slip up against the Mumbai Indians at Bangalore. Zaheer Khan is finding the wickets to go with his economy but Vinay Kumar, Harshal Patel and Prasanth Parameswaran/KP Appanna still need to work on keeping the runs down. Muttiah Muralitharan too has conceded runs on occasion too and White could very well replicate the kind of assault Taylor launched against the veteran offie on Thursday, something the management will want to plan for.

The fielding has stepped up to the occasion and Virat Kohli showed some fine-tuning to his settings against Delhi but both can improve. Kohli especially will want to work on his over-rates.

Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab have fallen aside and DC will be eager to crash one more party. RCB will have to be on guard that it doesn’t happen.