What

The VIVO IPL 2017 season began with a clash between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore. The two teams will come up against each other to kick off the second-half of the regular league season, though this time RCB will play hosts.

RCB will be hurting from their embarrassing defeat to the Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday night. Virat Kohli’s bowlers came back brilliantly to bundle out KKR for 131, but in an astonishing second half, RCB themselves were bundled out for 49 – the lowest total posted in the IPL – with not one batsman getting past single figures. Skipper Kohli was at a loss for words when asked to explain the debacle, but one can expect some blunt words would have been spoken in the dressing room. RCB currently sit at the floor of the VIVO IPL 2017 standings and can barely afford another loss if they are to stay in the race for the Playoffs; they have two wins from seven matches, and given how closely teams are packed, RCB need to pick themselves up and start piling on the wins from hereon.

Sunrisers Hyderabad, despite their last-ball defeat to Rising Pune Supergiant, are fairly comfortably placed in the standings with four wins from half their league matches. The team has almost all bases covered; the captain David Warner has not been at his destructive best yet, but he does the grind and scores runs, while there have been several other contributors with the bat. The bowling attack has been good too, though the team will be a tad disappointed with the result in the previous match. The one area that SRH will want to improve upon is their away record; they have played three matches on the road this season and are still winless.

When

25 April 2017, 2000 Hrs IST

Where

M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru

The Protagonists

Both captains in this match – Virat Kohli for RCB, and David Warner for SRH – believing in leading from the front. Both players are playing fantastic cricket and will look to set the tone for their respective teams. There’s an envious support cast too – Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers for RCB, and Shikhar Dhawan and Yuvraj Singh for SRH.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar is bowling beautifully, sits at the top of the wicket-taker’s chart, and will look to add more wickets to his tally. Among others, look out for the leg-spinners’ club – Rashid Khan, Yuzvendra Chahal and Samuel Badree have been brilliant for most parts of the tournament, and they could cause some damage on Tuesday night.

Head to Head

Overall: Matches played – 10, Royal Challengers Bangalore Won – 4, Sunrisers Hyderabad Won - 6

Last 3 Meetings – 3, Royal Challengers Bangalore Won – 0, Sunrisers Hyderabad Won - 3

Trivia

David Warner relishes playing against RCB; in eight matches (for SRH) against RCB, he has scored a total of 462 runs at an average of 66.00 and a strike-rate 168.00. The left-hander has been SRH’s top-scorer in 6 of those eight matches.

Warner’s opposite number, Virat Kohli has an impressive record against SRH; he has scored 434 runs in 9 matches against SRH at an average of 146.62.

RCB & SRH have the two slowest scoring rates in the powerplay this season; while RCB have been the slowest at 6.15, SRH are the second-slowest in the first six overs, scoring their runs at 7.38 rpo. SRH though have been extremely cautious in the first six overs; they’ve lost only four wickets in that period in the seven matches they have played so far.

What Next

For Royal Challengers Bangalore: Home fixture Vs. Gujarat Lions, April 27

For Sunrisers Hyderabad: Away fixture Vs. Kings XI Punjab (at Mohali), April 28