Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will play Mumbai Indians (MI) in Match 18 of IPL 2022 on 9 April.The game will be played at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune.
Mumbai, the most successful team in the history of the IPL, already they have their work cut out if they hope to make the playoffs this year. Until now, they have lost their first three games. Meanwhile, Bangalore, the bookies’ favourites to lift the IPL trophy for the first time in their history, have made a reasonable start to this campaign. They recovered from an opening weekend defeat to win their next two games.
For Mumbai, even at this stage of the season, the margin for error is getting ever smaller. Captain Rohit Sharma will know better than anybody that it will not be long before the knives come out.
One man set to pay the price for that poor form is Australian fast bowler Daniel Sams. His 12 overs have gone for 187 runs this so far, this year and he has just one wicket to his name. Instead, they may rely on the pace attack of Basil Thampi, Jasprit Bumrah and Tymal Mills, and hope that Bumrah in particular can rediscover the form that has made him the number one rated T20I bowler in the world in the past.
That is only part of the problem. For bowlers to win the matches, the batters have to get enough runs on the board as well. Rohit and his colleagues need to start pulling their weight.
RCB will now hope to build and consolidate their start. They will look for Virat Kohli, liberated from the burden of captaincy, to start to show what he is capable of once more in the shortest format of the game.
On the bowling side, Harshal Patel had a slow start to the season. However, in the last match, against Kolkata Knight Riders, he showed signs of the form that earned him the Purple Cap as well as the MVP last season.
Likely XIs:
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis (c), Anuj Rawat, Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Sherfane Rutherford, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Harshal Patel, Wanindu Hasaranga, Mohammad Siraj, Akash Deep.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Dewald Brevis, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Kieron Pollard, Tim David, M. Ashwin, Tymal Mills, Jasprit Bumrah, Basil Thampi
Fantasy tips:
• Pick both Kohli and Maxwell. They should score useful runs for their side;
• Pick Harshal. He may again take wickets and at an economical rate;
Prediction:
RCB to heap more pain on MI fans.
Streaming:
‘Match 18 between RCB and MI will start at 19:30 on Saturday, April 9th. You can watch the match on the Star Network and Hotstar.