Virat Kohli will be back! That’s the big story from the IPL game to be played later today between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians later today. Virat has recovered from his shoulder injury and will team up with his great friend, AB de Villiers.
AB cut a lonely figure as he made a 46-ball 89 against the Kings XI side while the rest of the team did precious little. He will surely appreciate having Virat in the line-up.
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Royal Challengers Bangalore are only sixth in the IPL 2017, having lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad by 35 runs and Kings XI Punjab by eight wickets. They have won only one match, when they beat Delhi Daredevils by 15 runs.
Mumbai Indians have lost to Rising Pune Supergiant by seven wickets but have won two games so far, having beaten Kolkata Knight Riders by four wickets and Sunrisers Hyderabad by four wickets.
Kohli talked about how eager he was to get back into the side in a press conference: “I got hit [on the shoulder] on the 16th [of last month], so it has almost been a month since I was injured and it is never a good feeling when you have played for seven-eight years without missing a game at all.
“Resting [from a game] is different, missing because of injury is very different. I am just delighted to be back. Maybe that [injury] was just to reignite the spark in you that needs to stay. When you play a lot of cricket that can tend to go down. Luckily, it has stayed and now I am more excited to take the field.”
Kohli spoke at length about the incredibly stressful Australia series and says that the time-off from cricket had calmed him down: “In the course of such an important series, such a big event, you tend to sort of go into a zone. But you look in hindsight afterwards and think ‘maybe I could have done things differently’ or maybe handled myself differently, but in the larger picture you understand what was important for the team. So I have learnt a lot from that phase, in terms of learning as a captain, learning as an individual, learning as a person.”
“I have always tried to focus on my game and that’s about it. The camera and TV sort of packages it and it is not in my control. I wouldn’t say I would be disappointed if the attention is on me again, because I am used to it by now and I will definitely handle it better than I have in some instances in the past,” Kohli said
Speaking about the composition of his team, the Indian and RCB captain said, “When you want to create a combination, you throw in all sorts of names as far as the away guys are concerned. Chris[Gayle] has always been a priority for us in the past so many seasons. Last game was a scenario where AB [de Villiers] came in and Watto [Shane Watson] was captaining, and the other two guys [Billy Stanlake and Tymal Mills] were bowling well. So it was difficult to leave three of the others out and AB is in anyway. With that regard, that was why Chris was left out last game. What works for us in Bangalore, we will definitely go in with the strongest combination possible. Chris is a top contender to be playing the home games for us.”
Mumbai Indians have a settled looking team and have acquitted themselves well in this IPL so far. Any game between Mumbai and Bangalore has always been a cracker and we expect this one to be no different.
The Teams
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Virat Kohli, 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Shane Watson, 5 Kedar Jadhav, 6 Mandeep Singh, 7 Stuart Binny, 8 Pawan Negi, 9 Tymal Mills, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Aniket Choudhary
Mumbai Indians: 1 Parthiv Patel, 2 Jos Buttler, 3 Rohit Sharma, 4 Nitish Rana, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Krunal Pandya, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Tim Southee, 10 Lasith Malinga, 11 Jasprit Bumrah
Watch Royal Challengers Bangalore take on Mumbai Indians
Bengaluru, this April 14, 2017 at 1600 local (1030 GMT)!
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