On Saturday’s (31st October) double-header, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) are taking on each other in the evening at Sharjah Cricket Stadium (Sharjah).
Both teams are playing their 13th match of this IPL season. In the IPL 2020 points table (updated till 30th October 2020), Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore are in the 2nd position with 14 points (7 wins and 5 loses) and David Warner-led SunRisers Hyderabad are in the 7th position with 10 points (5 wins and 7 loses).
In the ongoing IPL 2020, they are meeting for the second time. Their first meeting in this season was during the 3rd match of the IPL 2020 (at Dubai, DSC on 21st September 2020), where RCB won by 10 runs.
IPL 2020, Match 52: Royal Challengers Bangalore vs SunRisers Hyderabad (RCB vs SRH) – Toss Report
SunRisers Hyderabad captain David Warner won the toss and chose to field first. They made only one replacement in the playing XI as Abhishek Sharma replaced Vijay Shankar.
Warner said, “We’ll have a bowl. Vijay Shankar is out, he’s done his hamstring. Saha fortunately is fit, so great to have him back in the team. Having positive attitude and coming out here, we obviously have to win both the games to make it to the finals. For us, it’s about to come out and start fresh and forget about the last game. It’s how I approach every game, try to come out and do my best and get us off to a good start.
“Obviously different wicket in Dubai compared to here in Sharjah with smaller boundaries. We gotta start well. We only one had one look at this ground that was against Mumbai. It was a challenge, looks like these wickets have slowed up a bit. Got to wait and see how this one plays.”
On the other hand, Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli confirmed that they made two changes in the playing XI. Navdeep Saini and Isuru Udana replaced Shivam Dube and Dale Steyn.
Kohli said, “We wanted to bat first to be honest. It’s pretty dry. We think it’ll get slower and slower as the game progresses. Pretty happy to be bating first. Navdeep’s back for Dube, Udana replaces Steyn from the last game. It was a strange phase of batting out there (against MI), whatever we hit went to hand.
“Usually, it doesn’t happen with our batting line-up, but these things happen on the field. Even then, we put up a good fight to defend 165. We are not too far away from having that professional performance that we have put in a number of times in this tournament.”
IPL 2020, Match 52: Royal Challengers Bangalore vs SunRisers Hyderabad (RCB vs SRH) – Playing XIs
SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH): David Warner (C), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Jason Holder, Abhishek Sharma, Rashid Khan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB): Josh Philippe, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers (wk), Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Washington Sundar, Chris Morris, Isuru Udana, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Yuzvendra Chahal