Indian Premier League (IPL) has reached more close to the final as the first qualifier will be played between Gujarat Lions (GL) and Royal Challengers Banglore (RCB) on the Chinnaswamy Ground of Banglore today. As the league stage matches ended, a new team in IPL 9 GL has topped the table while RCB ends at second. The stories of both the teams have been contradicting each other as GL was consistent in the beginning and lost its way in the last while RCB started slow but won last four games and entered into the qualifier.
Chinnaswamy stadium is known as the batting heaven and hell for the bowlers as it has flat pitch and small boundaries. In the lastface-off between GL and RCB on this ground, RCB takes a huge lead as it won the game by 144 runs which were also the biggest victories of the IPL 9 so far. ViratKohli and AB Devilliers have scored centuries and ended the innings at 108 and 129 respectively. If your team even scored 200 plus runs, but still it can be chase on this ground.
Batting
Both the teams have great opening combination but still the hit pair of Chris Gayle and ViratKohli dominating over the Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith. Though both openers of GL can be destructive on a given day but they have been inconsistent. Skipper Suresh Raina has not performed as he often did in the previous seasons. While the opponent skipper ViratKohli has been marvelous in this season hitting four centuries and is the leading scorer of the season.
For Gujarat Lions Aaron Finch and Southpaw is doing some great job. As it played exceptionally well and helped their team to win matches. Southpaw is leading scorer from the side with 397 runs in 13 innings with their 3 half-centuries. Followed the same steps, Aaron Finch has scored 339 at an average of over 42. McCullum has also shown some glimpses of their excellent batting in some matches and scored 321 runs.
ViratKohli is leading the team from the front as he scores 919 runs the best of all time in the IPL including his four centuries at an average of over 65. AB Devilliers has shown his perfection this time too and scored 603 runs including a century.
Bowling
Bowling has been the weak part for both teams as the economy of both the teams in last four overs is 11.13 (GL) and 10.71 (RCB) respectively. But the bowling of Gujarat looks more stable than RCB as GL have quality bowlers like RavindraJadeja, Praveen Kumar, Dwayne Bravo and Dhaval Kulkarni. While from the RCB camp only YujvendraChahal has able to impress with his bowling statistics. It is too easy to play because the steps are easy to understand.
RCB will be missing the key bowler of his army; left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Stark. Stark could add power to this team. Though, Virat is confident enough and said we can even win without the Australian fast bowler.
Key Players
If any of the team want to win, they will be depending on their key players to perform.
Both the teams looks stable but since RCB is playing on his home ground, it takes a huge advantage with him. We can aspect to see a tough contest between these two teams. Winning the toss will be crucial here as there has been only one stance where the first-innings score was below 180. All the eyes are on will ViratKohli able to give the same performance as he has performed in previous matches.
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