Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians, IPL, Bangalore April 16, 2010

Bangalore aim for strong finish

The Preview by Sidharth Monga

Match facts

Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians, Bangalore
Saturday, April 17
Start time 1600 (1030 GMT)

Jacques Kallis is competing with Sachin Tendulkar for the orange cap © Indian Premier League

Big Picture

Royal Challengers Bangalore may have - for all practical purposes - made it through to the semi-finals, thanks to a healthy net run-rate, but have every reason to go all out against Mumbai Indians in their last league match. They are one of the few teams to have beaten Mumbai this season, and they will want to convert it into some sort of a hold, for another meeting between the two teams in immediate future cannot be ruled out. Moreover, if they lose, Bangalore leave themselves open to being No. 4 in the table, which would mean a semi-final against Mumbai, and back-to-back matches against a team who have just beaten them. Mumbai will want to forget all the permutations and maintain a winning run.

Form guide (most recent first)

Bangalore WLWLL
Mumbai Indians WWLLW

Team talk


It's time for both teams to iron out final creases in their combinations before they get into knock-out territory. Bangalore have to decide between Ross Taylor and Cameron White, Praveen Kumar and Pankaj Singh, and Manish Pandey and any other opener. They are likely to continue trusting Taylor and Pandey, and Pankaj - after taking 2 for 27 in his only match of the season - could get another chance to present his case.

Mumbai need to decide on which two overseas players to pick out of Dwayne Bravo, JP Duminy and Ryan McLaren. They have also broken up a successful opening combination, and might go back to Shikhar Dhawan after Sanath Jayasuriya and Chandan Madan didn't perform. Ali Murtaza is giving R Sathish a run for the bowling allrounder's slot, and the absence of a proper wicketkeeper could be a problem, with Ambati Rayudu, Aditya Tare and Madan being lotteries behind the stumps.

Previously…


Bangalore 3 Mumbai 2
Their earlier encounter was one-way traffic, with R Vinay Kumar and Dale Steyn slicing open Mumbai's batting, and Jacques Kallis and Pandey leading the chase.

In the spotlight

Jacques Kallis followed up his captain's criticism with 4-0-19-1 (Shane Watson's wicket) and a duck in a simple chase against Rajasthan. Good enough on the day, but not the Kallis that set the first half of the tournament alight. It also meant that he didn't follow the time-honoured tradition, one he and Sachin Tendulkar have been following, of taking the orange cap off each other's head every time they bat.

Dale Steyn has been terrorising batsmen with his pace, bounce and movement. In the first match against Mumbai, he went for only 26 in four overs and took three wickets. But even during that spell, Tendulkar clipped three boundaries off the three balls he faced from Steyn. In fact, Steyn's previous tête-à-tête with Tendulkar was disastrous too, figures of 0 for 89 during the double-century in the Gwalior ODI. Add the century in the Kolkata Test, and Steyn's beauty to get Tendulkar in Nagpur seems like an age ago. Can Steyn pull one back in Bangalore?

Prime numbers and trivia

  • Kallis has scored ten fifty-plus scores in the IPL (all seasons), Tendulkar is joint-second with eight. At 15 half-centuries, Kallis is five behind the overall Twenty20 record held by Brad Hodge.

  • Across all three IPLs, Harbhajan Singh has been the stingiest bowler, conceding an average of 6.41 an over. Anil Kumble is a close third, with 6.52.

  • Bangalore has been the most boundary-happy venue this year, with 57.66% of the runs scored there coming in boundaries. Only Cuttack has a higher ratio - 59.76%.

  • Mumbai have been the best batting side in the last six overs, scoring at 11.04 an over, and the best bowling side too, conceding 8.12 an over. Not surprisingly that difference of 2.79 is the highest, with Bangalore's 1.19 being a distant second.

    The chatter

    "Our goal this time is to go one step further than what we did last season."
    Anil Kumble has his sight set on the trophy.

    "I was never in doubt [that others apart from me are performing too]. People questioned me, but I was never in doubt."
    Sachin Tendulkar doesn't agree that his team is reliant on him, and he has a clinical all-round performance against Delhi Daredevils as proof.

    Sidharth Monga is a staff writer at Cricinfo

    © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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