IPL-2023: Royal Challengers Bangalore to take on Kolkata Knight Riders at Bengaluru

In IPL Cricket, Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on Kolkata Knight Riders at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bengaluru. The match will begin at 7:30 pm.

The halfway stage of the IPL is upon us and it’s quite a heated race among the top seven as they jostle for spots in the final four. Among these teams is Royal Challengers Bangalore who for the first time in IPL 2023 have registered successive victories and will be aiming to make a hat-trick when they host Kolkata Knight Riders.

But their home record against the Knight Riders, ever since Brendon McCullum set the tone for the IPL in the inaugural game in 2008, hasn’t been great. Their last win at home against KKR came way back in 2015 and RCB will be hoping to end the rut against an under-pressure Knight Riders team entering this game on the back of four losses on the trot.

This will be RCB’s penultimate game at home before they set out to travel for a five-match stretch. As has been the case in the past, they haven’t converted the Chinnaswamy Stadium into their fortress, losing two out of the five matches played here.

The batting has revolved around Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell and Virat Kohli, with the trio having contributed 78.6 percent of the runs scored by the RCB players this season. A fragile middle-order, however, hasn’t been able to capitalise on the good starts, evidenced by the totals RCB finished with in their last two games, although their bowlers masked those shortcomings.

For KKR, it is the batting in the powerplay which has turned out to be their Achilles Heel – having lost 17 wickets inside the first six overs, most for any team in this IPL. They have had a lot of catching up to do because of this, both while setting targets and chasing.KKR’s spinners Varun CV, Sunil Narine and Suyansh Sharma have been doing all the heavy lifting with the ball while the pace department has been a let-down for the team.

Umesh Yadav, who was excellent in the powerplay in the previous season, has just picked up one wicket, and the rest too have disappointed. A combined economy rate of 12.46 for the pacers is a glaring issue for KKR.