IPL 2021, RR Vs RCB: Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will be up against the Rajasthan Royals (RR) on Thursday. The match will be played at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai at 7:30 pm IST. The head-to-head record between RR and RCB is 10-10, thus there’s no room to separate the two teams in that department. But, RR lost both the matches that they played against RCB in IPL 2020 in the UAE.
RCB are off to a great start as they have won all the three matches they have played so far in this year’s IPL. They have been the best performing team, so far. Rajasthan Royals, who are currently in seventh place in the points table have also looked this year. But they faced a big setback last week when Ben Stokes got injured for the entire tournament just after playing one match.
RCB’s main strength lies in their batting order which has Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, and Glenn Maxwell. But this year, they look pretty solid on the bowling side as well. Virat Kohli has various options in the form of Jamieson, Siraj, Chahal, and Harshal Patel. Sanju Samson has struggled against Chahal before, thus, it might be interesting to see him bat against the leggie.
Rajasthan Royals, on the other hand, will look to improve their recent record against RCB. In the absence of Ben Stokes, David Miller and Jos Buttler must step up to fill his shoes in the batting department. It will be a tricky job for Samson to pick his four bowlers. Nonetheless, he has some good options in the form of Sakariya, Unadkat, Gopal, and Mustafizur.
Here are the Predicted Playing XIs of both the teams:
Royal Challengers Bangalore Predicted XI: Virat Kohli (c), Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar, Glenn Maxwell, AB de Villiers (wk), Washington Sundar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Kyle Jamieson, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal
Rajasthan Royals Predicted XI: Jos Buttler, Manan Vohra, Sanju Samson (c & wk), Shivam Dube, David Miller, Riyan Parag, Rahul Tewatia, Chris Morris, Jaydev Unadkat, Chetan Sakariya, Mustafizur Rahman
The match is being played at Wankhede in Mumbai, thus the match is expected to be a high-scoring encounter. The captain winning the toss might choose to bowl first.