Daredevils set to engage RCB in elimination dance
Royal Challengers Bangalore will be keen to eliminate one rival for the playoff race, on Saturday
The Preview by Varun Shetty
11-May-2018
Big Picture
According to ESPNcricinfo's calculations, the teams placed below the top two will all stay in contention for playoff spots if they manage to hit 12 points. That means even Delhi Daredevils are not completely out of it yet. But the path to 12 points - they'll have to win all three of their remaining games - will be filled with nerves, calculations and uncertainty. Even if they manage it, they aren't assured a place.
Their immediate attention, therefore, will be on the closest rivals. Royal Challengers Bangalore sit in seventh place, above Daredevils with a game in hand and the same points tally. When they last met, Royal Challengers completed their most dominant win of the season with two overs to spare.
Since then, they've only won one out of five and are, as many had predicted, still figuring out a top-order combination that they can stick with. For the most part, it looks like this match will come down to that. The top four is where all the runs have come from for them. Can Royal Challengers' experienced batsmen outdo the boisterous Under-24 trio that are keeping Daredevils in the competition?
Previous meeting
Gautam Gambhir was still captaining Daredevils when the teams last met this season. Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer made quick fifties, but Royal Challengers' spinners did enough to keep them under 180. AB de Villiers then smashed a 39-ball unbeaten 90 to complete the chase in 18 overs.
Likely XIs
Delhi Daredevils: 1 Prithvi Shaw, 2 Jason Roy/Colin Munro, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Rishabh Pant (wk), 5 Glenn Maxwell, 6 Vijay Shankar, 7 Liam Plunkett, 8 Amit Mishra, 9 Harshal Patel, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Shahbaz Nadeem
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Manan Vohra 2 Parthiv Patel (wk), 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Colin de Grandhomme/Sarfaraz Khan, 7 Moeen Ali/Washington Sundar, 8 Tim Southee, 9 Umesh Yadav, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Mohammed Siraj
Strategy punt
When they last met, Royal Challengers neutralised Jason Roy by exploiting his weakness against legspin - in T20s since 2015, he has been dismissed by legspinners 13 times in 23 innings and scores at a strike rate 103.50. Daredevils made the lowest Powerplay score of the season then, with Roy making 5 off 16.
To offset that, Daredevils might be tempted to open with left-hander Colin Munro.
Stats that matter
- Prithvi Shaw has struck at 176.1 against pace and at 137.2 against spin this season, but he's been dismissed by spinners every time (four innings) he has faced them
- Virat Kohli has made four fifties at Feroz Shah Kotla in seven IPL innings and averages 83.8 at the ground
- Rishabh Pant's balls-per-boundary ratio hovers between three and six for the most part, but against offspinner Washington Sundar, this shoots up to 9.1 balls per boundary
- Royal Challengers have beaten Daredevils in all of their last five meetings at this ground
Fantasy pick
Moeen Ali is known to go berserk with the bat on occasion and against a team that is likely to play a legspinner and a left-arm spinner; he's a good bet to bring you points for his scoring rate and boundary-hitting abilities. This, of course, will be an addition to his bowling. He will definitely be a key part of Royal Challengers' strategy to dismiss Rishabh Pant and Munro, if Daredevils play him.
Varun Shetty is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo