The RCB against ‘the wall’
The Royal Challengers Bengaluru are quickly getting closer to the end of their road. With only one victory in six games, Faf du Plessis’s team is comfortably atop the league standings, just short of the halfway point of the 2024 Indian Premier League. Their bowling has been almost nonexistent, and their much-heralded hitting hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations.
SRH’s effective tempo attack
They will be playing against the dreadful Sunrisers Hyderabad team, who have a great lineup of ball-strikers and a strong, pace-oriented bowling unit captained by Pat Cummins. RCB’s spirits would typically rise upon their return to the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Monday night, after a string of defeats away from home. However, given their current four-match losing skid, they will need a great deal of motivation to find their way back into the tournament.
There is a lot of pressure on the batting group, which hasn’t yet arrived, except for Virat Kohli, because of the bowling group’s unusual misfiring. Glenn Maxwell, who suffered a thumb injury in the mid-week defeat to the Mumbai Indians, is the greatest letdown. Du Plessis is still struggling to find any kind of form, while Dinesh Karthik has been his usual electrifying self at the end. Just 32 runs have been scored by the usually gregarious Australian in six innings, with 28 coming from a single hit.
Following the crushing at the Wankhede Stadium the other night, Du Plessis was frank in his criticism of the bowling’s lack of penetration. His sorrow is validated by the numbers: in the Powerplay, RCB has taken only four wickets despite scoring 10.2 runs in the first six overs. As a result, they have been unable to put any type of pressure on the opponent.
Klaasen extraordinary
An SRH top order that earlier in the season produced the biggest total in IPL history will ruthlessly punish them if they are even slightly off the boil on Monday. Their aggressive designs have gained a new depth with the addition of Travis Head at the top of the tree, while Heinrich Klaasen at the bottom has been nothing short of extraordinary. Daniel Vettori, the head coach, praised Klaasen’s class (pardon the pun) and compared him to Andre Russell in terms of ball striking ability; 186 runs at a strike-rate of 193.75, however, show that this is no hollow brag.
With Nitish Kumar Reddy, the 2016 champions have uncovered a speedy all-round batsman who has capitalized on Mayank Agarwal’s first injury-related absence. Though the Chinnaswamy’s surfaces this season haven’t encouraged huge scoring as they did in the past, when totals above 190 were the norm rather than the exception, Agarwal may have dreams of returning to his home ground.
