High-flying sides Bangalore and Kolkata face off in the Monday encounter of Indian T20 League 2020.
Match Timings: Oct 12, 7:30 PM
Team Preview
This is the season where Bangalore can make things better and frame UAE’s memory on the wall. The pursuit of tournament title is going strong as Bangalore recently overcome Chennai to move into the top four. Virat Kohli played a fabulous knock to guide Bangalore a comfortable victory, following Sundar and Morris’ excellent bowling display. Morris got three-wickets haul in his first game and Udana is also taking the responsibility very well. In Spin, Kohli is making good use of Sundar in the powerplay and Chahal has been terrific in middle-overs. The death-overs issues will be solved later in tournament as they improved against Chennai. Finch is not so good from a couple of matches and Bangalore surely back him in next few games.
Meanwhile, Kolkata pulled off two outstanding wins against Chennai and Punjab from the jaws of the defeat. Karthik got runs in the previous game which is a positive sign. Tripathi-Gill combination is not bad as both players scored half-centuries in the last two crunch games. The captaincy was so sharp as Kolkata hold the nerve in flag-overs and used the conditions to pick right bowler on right time. Prasidh Krishna got a 3-for in his first game and it’s a bonus for them. Kolkata has a compact unit and they have so many match-winners who put them ahead of Bangalore on Monday night.
Pitch Report
Sharjah’s surface has been slightly changed after the first five games. The surface is bit slow and batsmen cannot get 200 every time. Short boundaries and dew might help batsmen to get 180-190. Chasing is still not a good idea, looking at the current trend in the league.
Possible XI
Bangalore
Devdutt Padikkal, Aaron Finch, Virat Kohli (c), AB de Villiers (wk), Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Shivam Dube, Chris Morris, Washington Sundar, Isuru Udana, Navdeep Saini, Yuzvendra Chahal
Kolkata
Rahul Tripathi, Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Sunil Narine, Eoin Morgan, Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik (c & wk), Pat Cummins, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Prasidh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy
Key Players
Bangalore
Virat Kohli
Season so far – M: 6, Runs: 223, Avg: 55.75
Previous outing – 90 (52)
Devdutt Padikkal
Season so far – M: 6, Runs: 211, Avg: 35.17
Kolkata
Shubhman Gill
Season so far – M: 6, Runs: 220, Avg: 44
Previous outing – 57 (47)
Rahul Tripathi
Season so far – 36 (16), 81 (51), 4 (10)
