The winners of the inaugural season, Rajasthan Royals, play Royal Challengers Bangalore in the second of two matches in the Indian Premier League on Sunday. Recent results for both sides have not been impressive, and will be keen to fix the flow.
Royal Challengers Bangalore, the home team, have one win from three matches so far. They suffered a shocking last-ball in the previous match when reigning champions Chennai Super Kings pulled off one of the most dramatic turnarounds to seal a last-ball finish.
With 205 on the board, Bangalore would have hardly thought of losing. Yet it happened as defending 42 runs off the final two overs could not happen for them. With the bat, there are positive signs as Chris Gayle smashed his way to 68 runs from just 35 balls.
He will continue to be the major threat against all teams and Sunday will be no different either. The bowling is where the problems lie though as only Muttiah Muralitharan has looked consistently accurate. Vinay Kumar was taken for plenty of runs and could see himself dropped.
Rajasthan Royals have faded away a bit after two impressive wins. Their last two matches ended in defeats as they have come to the bitter realization of their limitations. On a tricky pitch against Kolkata, they could manage to score 131 runs, with Owais Shah and Rahul Dravid digging in deep to score the runs.
Expected to be a different sort of pitch, the batsmen will need to show much more aggression on Sunday, and Ajinkya Rahane would well do a timely return to form after an impressive show in the first match.
The bowlers, despite being the weak link in the team, have performed reasonably well. Brad Hogg is slowly beginning to attract higher expectations off himself as he marks a remarkable comeback to competitive cricket at the age of 41.
The match will be played in Bangalore, starting at 8.00pm local time.