New Delhi: Rishabh Pant and his ways, unconventional to the core and which have fuelled Delhi Capitals’ rare title charge, will Sunday confront Virat Kohli and, ironically, in a city where he learned the ABC of cricket. There has been no looking back since Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore arrested a long losing streak on April 19 in Kolkata. RCB will enter the Feroz Shah Kotla, a very familiar place for their captain Kohli, on the back of a three-match winning run. But the visitors will still have to play out of their skins to stop Ricky Ponting and Sourav Ganguly’s rampaging outfit.
A win will ensure that Delhi, who are currently in the third spot behind Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, reach the cut-off limit of 16 points needed for a play-off berth. Delhi’s performance at home has been woeful but having registered a win after two consecutive losses here, the Shreyas Iyer-led outfit will be high on confidence. RCB will not be short on confidence either, the side seems to have regrouped successfully and found their groove.
They won their last three games defeating Kolkata Knight Riders, table topper CSK and Kings XI Punjab. The wins had briefly lifted the Bengaluru based outfit from the bottom of the table to the penultimate spot. They have eight points from 11 games. “The only focus was to play well as a team. Losing six in a row really hurt us. Literally no one in the team has been part of such a streak. So we just refreshed, thought about just enjoying ourselves and the important thing now is not to take on any pressure,” Kohli had said after his team beat KXIP. – PTI
teams (from)
Delhi Capitals: Shreyas Iyer (capt), Prithvi Shaw, Shikhar Dhawan, Rishabh Pant, Colin Ingram, Keemo Paul, Axar Patel, Rahul Tewatia, Amit Mishra, Kagiso Rabada, Ishant Sharma, Hanuma Vihari, Ankush Bains, Chris Morris, Sherfane Rutherford, Jalaj Saxena, Sandeep Lamichhane, Trent Boult, Avesh Khan, Nathu Singh, Bandaru Ayyappa, Colin Munro, Manjot Kalra.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (capt), Parthiv Patel, AB de Villiers, Colin de Grandhomme, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Moeen Ali, Shimron Hetmyer, Dale Steyn, Shivam Dube, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Devdutt Padikkal, Himmat Singh, Milind Kumar, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Heinrich Klaasen, Pawan Negi, Washington Sundar, Akshdeep Nath, Prayas Ray Barman, Kulwant Khejroliya, Tim Southee.
Match starts at 4pm. Live on Star Sports Select 4pm