The Royals meet in the one match in the Indian Premier League on Tuesday when two sides who can move joint top of the table meet in Pune as the Royal Challengers Bangalore take on the Rajasthan Royals in a good looking contest.
Both these teams have five wins to their name so far this season so the winners here won’t be too far from sealing a top four finish and then their attention will turn to finishing in the top two. The loser will leave themselves with a little bit more work to do.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
The Royal Challengers Bangalore saw a two match winning run come to an end in emphatic style over the weekend when they were bundled out for 68 by the Sunrisers Hyderabad and beaten with 12 overs to spare. That immediately tells them that they are going to need more points than six of the teams in this competition if they are going to go through to the finals because their net run rate has been absolutely decimated.
There is a fragility to the Bangalore batting. Even when they have put up big scores more often than not someone batting at six or lower has done most of the scoring and that isn’t a trend which is likely to be able to be maintained and therefore success will only ever be over a short period of time. The Royal Challengers do have a decent enough bowling attack if they can sort their top order batting problems out though.
Rajasthan Royals
The Rajasthan Royals have no such issues. In Jos Buttler they have not just the leading run scorer in the tournament but potentially the best white ball cricketer in the world in their ranks right now and when you consider he is getting excellent support from Shimron Hetmyer and the bowlers are all chipping in and delivering the goods, it is no surprise to see the Royals sat in third place in the table heading into this contest.
Rajasthan know that a win will send them back to the top of the table and that they will also be within a couple of wins of sealing a place in the finals. If there is a concern it might be that the form of Buttler isn’t going to last forever and they will need some other batters to deliver the goods but their order looks strong and deep. Their bowling has been a revelation in this competition so far though and there is no signs of that slowing down.
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Key Players
Dinesh Karthik wasn’t able to rescue the Royal Challengers Bangalore against the Sunrisers Hyderabad but he is still one of their most important batters. He has done plenty of damage in this tournament and will hope to do some more here.
Jos Buttler has been brilliant in the tournament to date and if he can get on top of the likes of Josh Hazlewood from an early stage in this match it will put the pressure on the Royal Challengers and have Rajasthan nicely ahead of the game.
Betting
This is the highest scoring ground in terms of sixes this season and I don’t see that trend changing here. While there is likely to be a reaction to Bangalore being shot out for 68 in the previous match I think the fact that this is a high scoring ground will dictate that the Royal Challengers come out all guns blazing here. We know the Rajasthan Royals will play with a bit of freedom so the trend of sixes coming along in decent supply here should continue.
Of the players in form who can biff a big ball we have the likes of Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, Shimron Hetnyer and Dinesh Karthik and then there are players like Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell and Devdutt Padikkal who won’t keep failing forever and it might be that this Pune ground brings them out of their shell. There hasn’t been a match here for almost 10 days so the wicket should be fresh and continue to play well so I like over 15.5 sixes here.
Tips
Back Over 15.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with BetVictor
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