Gujarat Lions take on Royal Challengers Bangalore in a very desperate encounter between two teams that are placed seventh and eighth respectively in IPL 2017. It’s not a pretty position to be at and both teams would really want to win to escape the humiliation of being placed last.
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Gujarat Lions recently lost to Mumbai Indians by six wickets. Their only win was against Rising Pune Supergiant who they beat by seven wickets while losing to Sunrisers Hyderabad by nine wickets
Royal Challengers Bangalore have been on a losing streak. They have lost their last three games – lost to Rising Pune Supergiant by 27 runs; went on to lose to Mumbai Indians by four wickets and lost to Kings XI Punjab in a big way by eight wickets. It’s a horrible, horrible feeling if you are an RCB fan.
For Gujarat Lions, Aaron Finch will take the spot of Jason Roy as the England batsman has not really done much at all in this tournament. He has misfired badly. Dwayne Bravo, their best player, is still recovering from his injury. He is perhaps the best all-rounder in T20 cricket right now and he is being badly missed. He is unlikely to start against RCB and needs a further two days to recover from his injury.
RCB have had a completely unbalanced team. They have two great players in Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers who have been doing their best. But the rest of the squad seems to be only making up the numbers without contributing much. Even Chris Gayle, considered to be the greatest T20 player in history has not done much. He seems to be at the end of his career and is no longer the force that he used to be.
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Their coach Daniel Vettori has said that he wants his younger batsmen to take on some of the pressure and not leave everything to Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. He also wants a big improvement from his star overseas players Chris Gayle and Shane Watson.
The Teams
Gujarat Lions: 1 Brendon McCullum, 2 Dwayne Smith, 3 Suresh Raina (capt), 4 Aaron Finch/Jason Roy, 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6 Ishan Kishan, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Praveen Kumar/Dhawal Kulkarni, 9 Basil Thampi, 10 AJ Tye, 11 Munaf Patel/Shadab Jakati
Royal Challengers: Bangalore 1 Chris Gayle/Shane Watson, 2 Virat Kohli (capt), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Mandeep Singh, 5 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 6 Vishnu Vinod (wk)/ Stuart Binny, 7 Pawan Negi, 8 Adam Milne/Billy Stanlake/Tymal Mills, 9 Samuel Badree, 10 S Aravind, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
Watch Gujarat Lions take on Royal Challengers Bangalore tonight at 8 pm on Sony Six!
