The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will play the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in Match 36 of IPL 2022, at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai on 23 April.
Both teams are in form. Bangalore have won five of their seven matches so far, and are firmly entrenched in the top four. Hyderabad, on the other hand, recovered from a difficult start to the season. They lost their first two matches before winning four on the bounce, and have a game in hand on some of the franchises around them.
The Brabourne Stadium pitch has favoured the batters recently, and there have been several scores in excess of 200. Dew, however, will favour the side batting second, because chasing is easier.
In terms of head to head records, Hyderabad have won 11 matches and Bangalore eight. However, this year, Bangalore started the season tipped by the bookmakers to do something they have never done before – to win the IPL itself. With the usual suspects, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, both as good as out of contention even at this stage of the season, they may never have a better chance.
Likely XIs:
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis (c), Anuj Rawat, Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, Suyash Prabhudesai, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, Josh Hazlewood, Mohammad Siraj.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (c), Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nicholas Pooran (wk), Shashank Singh, Shreyas Gopal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Marco Jansen, T Natarajan, Umran Malik.
Fantasy tips:
• Pick du Plessis. After a slow start, he has moved into third place in the Orange Cap standings, and may have a big role to play again, especially if he wins the toss.
• Hazlewood has only played three matches but has eight wickets to his name, translating his Test match form to the IPL. He can get among the wickets again. Pick him.
• Pooran has only shown glimpses of what he can do with the bat so far this season. This might be his night.
Whilst winning the toss might have a disproportionate effect on the outcome, RCB have the better balanced side and will start favourites, but close to 400 runs might be scored in this match.
Streaming
‘Match 36 between RCB and SRH will start at 19:30 on Saturday, April 23rd. You can watch the match on the Star Network and Hotstar.