Lions look to escape from last place

Royal Challengers Bangalore v Gujarat Lions
Bengaluru, April 27, 2017
Start time 2000 local (1430 GMT)

This season: A century opening stand between Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli set up a Royal Challengers total of 213 in the first innings. That was enough to ensure a 21-run win despite a 44-ball 72 from Brendon McCullum.

Overall: The teams have met four times, with Royal Challengers winning thrice and losing once. They have batted first in three of the four matches, posting totals of 180, 248 and 213.

With the allrounder Dwayne Bravo ruled out of the entire season with a hamstring injury, Lions have signed up Irfan Pathan as a replacement, who will now be playing for his sixth IPL franchise.

The last match at the Chinnaswamy, between Royal Challengers and Sunrisers Hyderabad, was washed out without a ball bowled. According to the Meteorological Centre's forecast for Thursday, Bengaluru can expect "one or two spells of rain or thundershowers".

The washout against Sunrisers left Royal Challengers with only five points from eight games. Their hopes for making the playoffs, therefore, hang by a thread. Even six wins out of their six remaining games may not guarantee qualification.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Chris Gayle/Travis Head/Shane Watson, 2 Virat Kohli (capt), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Stuart Binny, 7 Pawan Negi, 8 Tymal Mills/Adam Milne, 9 Samuel Badree, 10 S Aravind, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Gujarat Lions: 1 Brendon McCullum, 2 Aaron Finch/Jason Roy/James Faulkner, 3 Suresh Raina (capt), 4 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 5 Dwayne Smith, 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 Ishan Kishan, 8 Andrew Tye, 9 Basil Thampi, 10 Shubham Agarwal/Praveen Kumar/Dhawal Kulkarni, 11 Nathu Singh

Brendon McCullum has a poor record in T20s against both Samuel Badree (26 off 34 balls, two dismissals) and Yuzvendra Chahal (20 off 23 balls, three dismissals) - a case, perhaps, for Royal Challengers to bowl their legspinners in tandem with the new ball. The last time they met Lions, Royal Challengers opened the bowling with two spinners in Chahal and Pawan Negi.