IPL 2020 – Royal Challengers Bangalore’s lower order, Kings XI Punjab’s death bowling in sharp focus | Cricket


KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal, two of the many Karnataka boys in the Kings XI Punjab team © BCCI

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On the eve of the IPL’s opening match, the Royal Challengers Bangalore released a new anthem, which triggered a social-media backlash from fans who were angry that most of its lyrics were in Hindi moderately than Kannada, the official language of Karnataka, the state the team is based in.

Aside from a handful of exceptions through the years, IPL teams have represented their native geographies in only the most tenuous of ways, and it’s made little difference, by and large, to the fans who make stronger them. The irony of the Royal Challengers Bangalore squad containing only two Karnataka players in most cases goes unnoticed and unmentioned. But over recent seasons, one match-up has heightened the irony enough to make it a talking point.

KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Karun Nair, K Gowtham and J Suchith all play for Karnataka and for Kings XI Punjab, whose coach, Anil Kumble, is arguably Karnataka’s greatest-ever cricketer. Aside from the entire cricketing subplots of Thursday’s game, subsequently, there’s also Royal Challengers as opposed to Karnataka to bear in mind.

To the teams themselves, only the cricketing subplots will matter. Two of them could be of specific importance. Do the Royal Challengers have enough lower-order firepower to take away the inhibitions of their top order, and if this is the case, do the top-order batsmen believe that lower order enough? Do Kings XI have a death-bowling problem, and do they have got solutions for it inside their squad?

In the news

Chris Morris didn’t feature in the Royal Challengers’ opening game against Sunrisers Hyderabad, and their director of cricket operations Mike Hesson has elucidated that the South African allrounder used to be nursing a side strain. He hoped Morris would be fit to play “in a game or two”, so it remains to be seen whether he features against Kings XI.

Likely XIs

Kings XI Punjab: 1 KL Rahul (capt & wk), 2 Mayank Agarwal, 3 Karun Nair, 4 Nicholas Pooran, 5 Glenn Maxwell, 6 Sarfaraz Khan, 7 K Gowtham, 8 Chris Jordan, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Sheldon Cottrell.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Devdutt Padikkal, 2 Aaron Finch, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Josh Philippe (wk)/Moeen Ali, 6 Shivam Dube/Gurkeerat Singh Mann, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Dale Steyn. 9 Umesh Yadav, 10 Navdeep Saini, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal.

Strategy punt

The Royal Challengers’ use of Yuzvendra Chahal could revolve around where Glenn Maxwell bats. In all T20 cricket, Chahal has dismissed Maxwell five times in eight innings, while conceding 80 runs off 52 balls.

Ravi Bishnoi made an impressive IPL debut against the Capitals, tying down Rishabh Pant with his incorrect’uns delivered from over the wicket and veering absent from the left-hander’s hitting arc. The same weapon could come in useful against a right-hand batsman in Thursday’s game. In all T20 games since the start of 2018, Kohli has been dismissed by the googly three times in 32 balls, while only scoring 40 runs off them. Kohli’s strike rate against the legbreak (130.2) is not too worrying either whether Kings XI wish to deploy Bishnoi against him.

Stats that matter

Since the start of the 2019 season, the Royal Challengers (11.4) and Kings XI (10.5) have boasted two of the three worst death-overs (16-20) economy rates in the IPL, sandwiching the Kolkata Knight Riders (10.8). It clearly remains an issue for Kings XI – whose final three overs against the Delhi Capitals went for 57 runs – while the Royal Challengers didn’t have that facet of their game tested in their opening game thanks to the Sunrisers’ spectacular collapse.

Kings XI’s death-overs issues could come into even sharper focus against the Royal Challengers, three of whose batsmen – Virat Kohli (216.42), AB de Villiers (215.67) and Moeen Ali (215.09) – are some of the top five batsmen overall since the start of 2019 (minimum 200 runs) when it comes to T20 strike rates in that phase.

Two of those three batsmen, alternatively, have in recent times been scoring slowly in the overs leading up to the slog. Since the start of the 2019 season, de Villiers (129.14) and Kohli (120.14) have low strike rates in the middle overs (7-15) of IPL matches. In that phase, Kohli has only hit boundaries once each 12.2 balls. Moeen (158.20), alternatively, has a healthy middle-overs strike rate, and this could immediate the Royal Challengers to pick out him ahead of Josh Philippe.

Among all batsmen with no less than 200 runs in the middle overs since 2019, Mayank Agarwal (151.74) has the second-best strike rate in that phase in the back of Jonny Bairstow (157.04). KL Rahul is fifth at 138.69.

Rahul needs two runs to total 2000 in the IPL. Whether he gets there in Thursday’s game, he’ll have done so in his 60th innings, fitting the third-quickest to the mark in the back of Chris Gayle (48) and Shaun Marsh (52) and the quickest Indian ahead of Sachin Tendulkar (63).

Dale Steyn is three wickets absent from 100 in the IPL.

Kings XI is Yuzvendra Chahal’s favourite opponent in the IPL with regards to wicket-taking. He is taken 19 against them at an average of 16.0 and a strike rate of 12.4, though his economy rate of 7.8 is worse than it is against the Rajasthan Royals (5.7) and the Chennai Super Kings (6.9).

Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo

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ESPN Sports Media Ltd.


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