The Royal Challengers Bangalore will face the South Australia Redbacks in their final group stage match at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, a virtual quarter final for them to make it to the semi final of Champions League T20.
Permutations and combinations notwithstanding, RCB’s 51 run win against Somerset has put them in a position from where all they need to progress is a win, no worries about the margin of victory such as the one that did CSK in against NSW Blues.
That said, no IPL team has beaten an Australian side in the three editions of CLT20 yet and South Australia are no pushovers. They were poor against Warriors, sliding to a 50 run defeat but came back strongly against KKR with the washout against Somerset giving them one very handy point.
RCB’s top order fired on Monday and that was enough for them to post the first 200 plus total of the tournament, a feat they will want to repeat against the Redbacks. Chris Gayle, the leitmotif of the team’s wins this year will face a tough opponent in Nathan Lyon, the off spinner who just had a brilliant debut series in Sri Lanka. But as skipper Daniel Vettori made clear post their win on Monday, RCB isn’t a one man team.
The other batsmen Dilshan, Kohli, Tiwary and Agarwal have so far hit runs to build around Gayle’s innings but will want to do one better with their own match winning knocks.
The performance of the bowlers is something that Vettori will be a lot more relaxed about. Scoreboard pressure or not, the Indian core of Aravind, Bhatkal and Syed Mohammad bowled sensibly to reign in the rampant Somerset batsmen and seal the game after a weak performance in the first half. Vettori himself kick started the process but Nannes’ good show will be a relief for him too especially considering how another left arm pacer Lonwabo Tsotsobe ran through the Redbacks top order for the Warriors.
The fielding still has room for improvement though; catches which could have ended the match earlier were put down and many easy singles were conceded to give Somerset what they got. It is something that will present their opposition an edge, a gift, in this very important match.
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