Virat Kohli vs Steven Smith takes centre stage as Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals eye top spot

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It's Virat Kohli vs Steven Smith time at IPL 2020. A contest that is bound to dominate sports pages, web pages and social media over the next three months when India tour Australia. Part of this season's first double-header, Saturday's afternoon clash in Abu Dhabi between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Rajasthan Royals, however, promises to be a relatively milder prelude. At stake, though, is the No. 1 spot in the points table, a position neither side has been in too often.

Both teams are into only their fourth game this season, but the mood is contrasting in the two camps: the Royal Challengers are coming off a Super Over win against the Mumbai Indians; the Royals off a pounding at the hands of the Kolkata Knight Riders. For a change, Kohli's men appear settled combination-wise, but will have to answer one burning question: how much workload is too much workload for AB de Villiers?

Three nights ago, de Villiers struggled with cramps and dehydration, after having batted for the majority of the Royal Challengers' innings and then keeping wickets for 20 overs. With an afternoon start in Abu Dhabi, it remains to be seen if head coach Simon Katich and Kohli will want to free him up of the wicketkeeping duties. If they do think on those lines, Gurkeerat Singh, who didn't bat or bowl in his first and only outing of the season so far, against the Mumbai Indians, may have to make way for specialist wicketkeeper-batsman Parthiv Patel.

The Royals struggled so badly against the Knight Riders, the former's first game outside Sharjah, two nights ago that questions were immediately raised over batting positions of key players. Smith hasn't done too badly at the top, but that has meant Robin Uthappa, someone they went big on at the auction, has batted in the middle order or lower-middle order despite having much of his IPL success as a top-order batsman. With Sanju Samson settled at No. 3, it could be interesting to see if the team decides to push Uthappa up or rejig the middle order, with Smith continuing to open. Despite Rahul Tewatia's new-found stardom, the lower-middle order looks shaky. Riyan Parag seems short on confidence, and the batting beyond No. 5 looks brittle.

But the Royals have still got two wins in the bag, so not all is doom and gloom yet. They bundled out the Royal Challengers for 70 the only time these two sides faced each other in the UAE in 2014. Last year, Shreyas Gopal, the legspinner, picked up a hat-trick, including the wickets of Kohli and de Villiers, to take his side to an impressive win. As such, Kohli vs Smith and Kohli vs Jofra Archer, who has been consistently clocking 150kph this season, promise a fascinating subplot to the bigger picture. Kohli must be hurting after a slow start to his campaign, with scores of 14, 1 and 3 and must be itching to break the shackles. Can the Royals stop him?

Likely XIs

Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Devdutt Padikkal, 2 Aaron Finch, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, Gurkeerat Singh/Parthiv Patel, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Chris Morris/Isuru Udana, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Navdeep Saini, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Adam Zampa

Rajasthan Royals: 1 Jos Buttler (wk), 2 Steven Smith (capt), 3 Sanju Samson, 4 Robin Uthappa, 5 Manan Vohra/Riyan Parag, 6 Rahul Tewatia, 7 Shreyas Gopal, 8 Tom Curran, 9 Jofra Archer, 10 Jaydev Unadkat, 11 Ankit Rajpoot