The knockout games in Vivo Indian Premier League are beginning from 24th May with first playoff match between top two teams of the league stage i.e. Gujarat Lions and Royal Challengers Bangalore. M. Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru to host this first qualifier match on Tuesday from 8:00 PM IST. Winner of this qualifier will seal berth for final while loser will get one more chance to qualify for final.
Preview
Gujarat Lions is the top team in Points Table with 9 wins and 18 points in the league stage while Royal Challengers Bangalore won 8 games to make it through to knockouts. Well it’s been a great journey for RCB in the second half of the championship where they won 6 games out of 7. On the other side, GL lost momentum in the middle after winning starting few matches. But they returned to the form and gain momentum in the league.
The last time when these two teams met, was the same ground M. Chinnaswamy stadium. In that match, RCB thrashed Gujarat Lions by 144 runs which is the biggest run defeat margin in the history of Indian Premier League. Royal Challengers Heroes Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers scored brilliant hundreds to take team’s score 248 after completion of 20 overs. Gujarat lost that match in the first half of game and they will look at avenge that defeat in qualifier-1.
RCB team will definitely be looking forward to see such kind of destructive batting from these two champion batsmen, especially from their skipper Virat Kohli who has scored 919 runs till now in the season. He has smashed 4 hundreds and 6 fifties in this ninth Vivo IPL and will definitely be looking to cross landmark of 1000 runs in a single Indian Premier League season which is never happened before. AB De Villiers has also scored 600+ runs in the league.
Chris Gayle and KL Rahul have also made an impact in the competition although Gayle played only 2 good innings in the tournament but who knows it could be his day. So it will be a tough challenge for Gujarat Lions bowlers once again. Gujarat have also got some dangerous batsmen like Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Suresh Raina, Dwayne Smith who can turn around the game at any instant. It will be a good first qualifier match of IPL 2016.
Squads
Gujarat Lions
Suresh Raina (Captain), Ishan Kishan, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo, James Faulkner, Praveen Kumar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shivil Kaushik, Pradeep Sangwan, Sarabjit Ladda, Amit Mishra, Akashdeep Nath, Paras Dogra, Dwayne Smith, Eklavya Dwivedi, Shadab Jakati, Pravin Tambe, Jaydev Shah, Umang Sharma, Dale Steyn, Andrew Tye.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
Virat Kohli (Captain), AB de Villiers, Shane Watson, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sachin Baby, Sarfaraz Khan, Parvez Rasool, Varun Aaron, Chris Gayle, Travis Head, Chris Jordan, Kane Richardson, David Wiese, Stuart Binny, Abu Nechim, Praveen Dubey, Iqbal Abdulla, Sreenath Aravind, Kedar Jadhav, Akshay Karnewar, Lokesh Rahul, Vikramjeet Malik, Mandeep Singh, Tabraiz Shamsi, Harshal Patel and Vikas Tokas.
Predictions
Score: M. Chinnaswamy stadium of Bangalore always favor batsman and we lots of high scoring games on this venue. Both Gujarat and Bangalore are strong sides and they have got some great hard hitters in the context of T20 format. The projected average score on this wicket is 190+. Hence we can have a high scoring game once again.
Win Chances: Both teams look settled and dangerous. It will be home environment for Royal Challengers Bangalore hence they know the conditions very well. RCB will be favorites to win against Gujarat Lions in the first qualifier of Vivo IPL-9. As per our predictions, Royal Challengers Bangalore have 55 percent winning chances over GL.