Two teams that are desperate for a win will face off at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday as the Royal Challengers host the Rising Pune Supergiant.
Both franchises have just two points on the board so far and will be eager to climb up the table.
This match will see Virat Kohli up against Steve Smith – the two captains from the bitterly fought series between India and Australia recently and that should make for some interesting viewing.
Ahead of the match, we have the latest team news, time and date, as well as how you can watch all the action from the UAE.
DATE, TIME, VENUE INFO
Date: April 16, 2017 (Sunday)
Time: 18:30 GST, 20:00 local time (IST), 14:30 GMT
Venue: M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru
WHERE TO WATCH, LIVE STREAMING INFO
TV: UAE – OSN Sports Cricket HD, India – Sony Six, Sony Six HD (English), Sony Max, Sony Max HD 3 (Hindi), UK – Sky Sports
Online streaming: hotstar.com, Hotstar app (in India only)
LIVE: Sport360.com.
TEAM NEWS, SQUADS, PREDICTED XIs
RCB SQUAD: Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Shane Watson, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sreenath Aravind, Kedar Jadhav, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Iqbal Abdullah, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Pawan Negi, Tymal Mills, Aniket Choudhary, Praveen Dubey, Billy Stanlake, Vishnu Vinod.
Chris Gayle’s form is a big concern for the Royal Challengers which might tempt them to bring Shane Watson back into the team.
If Watson does return, it’ll be interesting to see if Kohli chooses the Australian or Mandeep Singh as his opening partner.
The inclusion of Watson could also lead to the Bengaluru-based team dropping one of Pawan Negi or Stuart Binny for a specialist batsman.
PREDICTED RCB XI: Kohli (c), Watson, de Villiers, Jadhav, Mandeep, Negi, Binny, Aravind, Badree, Chahal, Mills.
RPS SQUAD: MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, Steve Smith, Faf du Plessis, Ashok Dinda, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Ankit Sharma, Ishwar Pandey, Adam Zampa, Jaskaran Singh, Baba Aparajith, Deepak Chahar, Usman Khawaja, Mayank Agarwal, Ben Stokes, Jaydev Unadkat, Rahul Chahar, Saurabh Kumar, Dan Christian, Milind Tandon, Rahul Tripathi, Manoj Tiwary, Lockie Ferguson, Shardul Thakur, Imran Tahir.
There are big worries for the Pune-based franchise when it comes to the composition of the team and how they balance out their four foreign players.
Du Plessis has played just one game in the IPL so far this season and could feature in this match, but if he does play, that might lead to Pune playing just five bowlers in their XI which is a risky ploy.
To avoid that, there is a chance that either Dan Christian or Rajat Bhatia could make the XI.
PREDICTED RPS XI: Rahane, Tripathi, Smith (c), du Plessis, Tiwary, Stokes, Dhoni (wk), Thakur, Pandey, R Chahar, Tahir.
FORM
(Last five matches – with latest match first)
RCB: L L W L L
RPS: L L L W W
MATCH PREDICTION
The Royal Challengers to get back on track with a win.
