Toss Royal Challengers Bangalore chose to bowl v Rising Pune Supergiant
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
03:32
Bangar: Kohli’s unorthodox style of play helps him dominate legspinners
It was all so very different in Pune two months ago, remember? Virat Kohli was the home captain taking his team up a points table and Steven Smith was the visiting captain leading a team few thought would pull an upset. Then on came the IPL and demanded a role reversal.
Smith is the home captain now, a Supergiant looking for their first IPL playoff spot, and Kohli is the visiting captain, a Royal Challenger in great need of good news. The toss provided some straight away; he won it and chose to bowl on a ground both captains felt was better to chase on. The advantage – in numbers, at least – isn’t very stark. Fourteen teams have won batting second in 29 IPL matches at the MCA stadium.
Both teams were coming off losses and were prompted into making some changes. Ben Stokes remained on the sidelines for Pune, who replaced him with fast bowler Lockie Ferguson. They also swapped Shardul Thakur out for Deepak Chahar.
RCB did not mind having Chris Gayle on the bench, opting for the services of fast bowler Adam Milne instead. Stuart Binny and Sachin Baby were also part of the XI, in place of Mandeep Singh and Aniket Choudhary.
RCB have five matches left in the tournament and they would prefer to win all of them to stay in contention for the playoffs. “Nothing is impossible,” Kohli said. “We need five good results and I think we have the team to do that.”
Rising Pune Supergiant: 1 Ajinkya Rahane, 2 Rahul Tripathi, 3 Steven Smith (capt), 4 MS Dhoni (wk), 5 Manoj Tiwary, 6 Dan Christian, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Deepak Chahar, 9 Lockie Ferguson, 10 Imran Tahir, 11 Jaydev Unadkat
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Travis Head, 2 Virat Kohli (capt), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 5 Sachin Baby, 6 Stuart Binny, 7 Pawan Negi, 8 Samuel Badree, 9 S Aravind, 10 Adam Milne, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
Alagappan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo