Mohammed Shami (R) is returning to competitive cricket from a hamstring injury © Delhi Daredevils
Mohammed Shami returned to play his first IPL game in two seasons as Delhi Daredevils elected to bowl against Royal Challengers Bangalore on what is expected to be a flat batting track at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
Shami, who hasn’t played a competitive fixture since the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in January because of a hamstring injury, was brought in place of Jayant Yadav, the offspinner.
Daredevils chased down King XI Punjab’s 111 by eight wickets to post their first win of the season at the Feroze Shah Kotla on Friday. Zaheer Khan, the captain, hoped they could pull off a repeat against his old franchise.
“When Virat is chasing, he is very dangerous. So we decided to bowl first,” Zaheer Khan laughed. “We wanted to play an extra seamer here. RCB’s lower order has a lot of Indian batters, and we wanted to exploit that.”
Hosts Royal Challengers, who have enjoyed a four-day break since their tournament opening win against Sunrisers Hyderabad, brought in S Aravind and David Wiese in place of Stuart Binny and Adam Milne.
Daredevils’ last victory over Royal Challengers came in April 2010. Since then they have played and lost eight matches.
Delhi Daredevils: Quinton de Kock (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson, Karun Nair, Jean-Paul Duminy, Pawan Negi, Carlos Brathwaite, Chris Morris, Zaheer Khan(c), Mohammed Shami, Amit Mishra
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli (capt), AB de Villiers, Shane Watson, Sarfaraz Khan, Kedar Jadhav (wk), David Wiese, Parvez Rasool, Harshal Patel, Sreenath Aravind, Yuzvendra Chahal
Shashank Kishore is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo