RCB vs KXIP 42nd Match Prediction

RCB vs KXIP Team Previews

Royal Challengers Bangalore

There is something about IPL teams that we will never understand. All of these teams seem to want to ‘hold’ their in-form players rather than rewarding them by sending them up the order. Moeen Ali played a match-winning knock of 66 from just 28 deliveries and was demoted in the next match! Virat Kohli has never been the most tactically astute captain but questions must be asked from the entire team management as to their thinking.

In this next match against the Kings XI, Royal Challengers Bangalore are going to be facing one of its old superstars. Chris Gayle made his name playing for the Bengaluru team and would love to show them what they are missing out on.

Of course, Dale Steyn might have a couple of thoughts about that.

Dale Steyn has made an immediate impact to the side ever since he has joined them. He is picking up early wickets and is giving Virat Kohli an experienced option to turn to during the end of the inning.

Steyn, Navdeep Saini, and even Umesh Yadav bowled well for the majority of their last match. We don’t think there will be any change to the bowling side in this next match.

Yuzvendra Chahal, Pawan Negi, Marcus Stoinis, and Moeen Ali also give the Royal Challengers Bangalore plenty of bowling options which they can make use of. We quite like the match-up of this set of bowlers against the Kings XI batsmen.

The batting performance by RCB was not too good in the previous match. Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers did not score too many runs while Marcus Stoinis and Moeen Ali did not have enough time to make an impact. Clearly, Virat Kohli is worried about collapses and is trying to spread out his best players in the batting order.

However, having Parthiv Patel and Akshdeep Nath take up valuable overs while the big names are sitting in the dressing room cannot be helpful in the long run. Parthiv is not going anywhere now, but we can expect to see Moeen Ali move back to his number four position.

Kings XI Punjab

A loss to the Delhi in the previous game has put the brakes on a Kings Xi recovery in IPL 2019. Now, they have another opportunity to try and get into the top-4 of the tournament. There are some clear problems that Kings XI has been having but we think they are going to go to Bengaluru with a lot of hope.

The Kings XI have in their squad some players that are going to enjoy playing at the Chinnaswamy. Chris Gayle called RCB home for a long time, Lokesh Rahul has grown up playing there, and Mandeep Singh will have some very fond memories of his time with RCB as well.

The conditions in Bengaluru are also very good for batting in most matches. Big-hitters have done well here and that is exactly what the Kings XI have in their side. Chris Gayle Lokesh Rahul, David Miller, and even Sam Curran are some of the players that we would watch out for in this match.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore also have some spinners that are going to be turning the ball into the left-handers. We really think there is a betting opportunity in backing the Kings XI batsmen to score a lot of runs.

The weakness in the Kings XI batting has been apparent. They are extremely dependent on Gayle and Rahul to do most of the work and the depth is just not there. Ashwin has also been making a bit too many changes to the side.

We could see a few more changes if Mujeeb ur Rahman and Moises Henriques have regained their fitness as well. The biggest danger to the Kings XI side is going to be its bowling. We don’t think they have the bowling to be able to stop the Royal Challengers Bangalore batsmen from scoring freely.

It could all come down to a six-hitting fest with bowlers being put to the sword.