RCB eye a smart outing from bowlers against GT to maintain winning run

Royal Challengers Bengaluru's desire to make their home-coming a memorable occasion pivots around an experienced bowling unit maintaining its excellent form when they face Gujarat Titans in an IPL match here on Wednesday.

The bowlers played a big hand in RCB taming two traditionally tough opponents in Kolkata and Chennai but now they face a different challenge at home against the Titans.

The Chinnaswamy Stadium pitch has always had this allegiance towards batters, evidenced by the three 260-plus totals here.

The short boundaries and a quick outfield add to the misery of the bowlers, but the Royal Challengers will believe that they have two bowlers who can contain batters here — Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

While they have not set the stats chart ablaze, Hazlewood has conceded just 5.37 runs an over in this IPL, while Bhuvneshwar, who returned to the field for the CSK match, has an economy of 6.6.

This frugality by their new ball bowlers will be RCB's biggest asset against Gujarat's capable top-order.

Captain Shubman Gill and B. Sai Sudharsan have already developed into a good opening pair, and RCB will be eager to prevent their alliance from blossoming through Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar.

The Aussie can hit the hard lengths to find disconcerting bounce and Bhuvneshwar can operate in a tight line while troubling the batters with his ability to swing the new ball.

This versatility makes the RCB pace pair a massive threat in most conditions.

Yash Dayal, the left-arm pacer, too has grown into a dependable and crafty support bowler to the seniors.

However, RCB might feel a bit underwhelming in the spin department with Krunal Pandya and Suyansh Sharma manning that space, and their skills will be put to test.

On the other hand, GT have two proven campaigners in their spin attack in Rashid Khan and R Sai Kishore.

Their battle with RCB batters such as Virat Kohli, Phil Salt, skipper Rajat Patidar, a very fine player of spin, and Devdutt Padikkal will have a huge bearing on the outcome of the match.

Their pace duo of Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Siraj, who migrated to GT from RCB through last year's auction, will be looking to soften the Bengaluru top order with some early blows so that the spinners can do their job without much pressure.

Ace batter Kohli and Englishman Salt have already shown signs of being in perfect sync with each other while stitching together stands of 95 and 45 in the last two matches, and they could be even more dangerous at the Chinnaswamy.

Gujarat will require an early wicket or two before RCB, the current table-toppers, run away with the match, and they will expect Rabada to do the job.

Rabada has a good head-to-head match-up against Kohli in all T20s, bagging his wicket four times in 14 innings while limiting his strike-rate to an appreciable 113.

In short, the team whose bowlers adapt better to the conditions has better chances of coming out on the right side of the result.

The RCB fanbase will hope that it will be the red and gold brigade on a day when light showers are predicted.

Teams (from): Gujarat Titans: Shubman Gill (C), Jos Buttler, B. Sai Sudharshan, Shahrukh Khan, Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Nishant Sindhu, Mahipal Lomror, Kumar Kushagra, Anuj Rawat, Manav Suthar, Washington Sundar, Gerald Coetzee, Mohmmad Arshad Khan, Gurnoor Singh Brar, Sherfane Rutherford, R. Sai Kishore, Ishant Sharma, Jayant Yadav, Glenn Phillips, Kareem Janat, Kulwant Khejroliya.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Rajat Patidar (C), Virat Kohli, Swastik Chikara, Devdutt Padikkal, Jitesh Sharma, Philip Salt, Manoj Bhandage, Tim David, Krunal Pandya, Liam Livingstone, Romario Shepherd, Jacob Bethell, Swapnil Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, Nuwan Thushara, Lungi Ngidi, Yash Dayal, Rasikh Dar Salam, Suyash Sharma, Mohit Rathee, Abhinandan Singh.

Match starts at 7.30 pm.