The Match: The 11th game of the Indian Premier League will see the Deccan Chargers take on the Royal Challengers Bangalore. The match will be a home-game for the Chargers and will be played at the Rajiv Gandi Stadium in Hyderabad.
How the two teams match up: Both sides have played a couple of games each. The Chargers have lost both their matches played whereas the Royal Challengers Bangalore followed their first game win against the Kochi Tuskers with a loss to the powerful Mumbai Indians.
The Deccan Chargers have batted rather badly in the two games played and will need to overcome their top-order woes. On the other hand, Bangalore will need to look at their bowling line-up, which lacks in a good, penetrative spinner.
Ground Conditions: In the last game that was played on this ground, the Rajasthan Royals’ medium pacers had made life difficult for the batsmen. There was a bit of green on the track. However, for this game there is a good chance that the Chargers will hope for a slower, almost-spin friendly track, given their opposition’s strength is pace and they have two of the better spinners in the competition, in Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha.
Surprisingly, Deccan Chargers have never won a single game here at their home ground.
The Teams: Royal Challengers Bangalore have a good batting side. At the top of the innings and despite T Dilshan’s single-digit score in the Kochi game and a struggling 50 in the game against the Mumbai Indians, they have enough firepower to test the opposition. AB de Villiers is another of those who will punish the Chargers bowlers, whether it is spin or pace.
However, the bowling will be a bit of a worry. Zaheer Khan has looked like a pale shadow of himself while Dirk Nannes’ injury means that he could have to be replaced by someone like Charl Langeveldt. Daniel Vettori also needs support from the other end.
The Chargers’ batting is over-dependent on Kumar Sangakkara and to expect the guys like Shikhar Dhawan, Bharat Chipli and Ishank Jaggi to get the big runs is expecting the moon. JP Duminy needs to take up lot more of the responsibility than he has had so far, when it comes to batting.
The Chargers have a good bowling attack in Ishant Sharma, Dale Steyn, Mishra and Ojha.
Players to look out for: Expect Virat Kohli to get some runs in this game for the Royal Challengers Bangalore while Chargers need Dan Christian to blast a few towards the end of the innings.
Prediction: Bangalore will be the favourites if the track continues to exhibit the streak of green that it earlier had.