When Royal Challengers Bangalore host the Mumbai Indians, it will be a face off between a side that hasn't had all its batsmen available and one that has over the years struggled to nail down positions for its top batsmen
Chris Gayle, Daniel Vettori
Royal Challengers Bangalore's Chris Gayle (left) and coach Daniel Vettori during a cheerful practice session in Bangalore yesterday. Pic/PTI
Bangalore: When Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) host the Mumbai Indians (MI) at the Chinnaswamy Stadium this evening, it will be a face off between a side that hasn't had all its batsmen available and one that has over the years struggled to nail down positions for its top batsmen. Do note that MI still have won two titles as against RCB's zero rate of success thus far in the nine editions gone by.
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If RCB haven't had the luxury of playing their main batsmen, thanks to the injury layoffs of skipper Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, with MI its once again a question of where to play their main batsmen.
Will Pollard fire?
Does Rohit Sharma, who opens for India in the shorter formats, open here too, what is Kieron Pollard's ideal batting number — perhaps Sanjay Manjrekar can tell them — and which of the Pandya brothers bats ahead of the other, are the questions facing the visiting side. Good for them then that even in such a scenario they have won two of their three matches this season unlike RCB who have lost two of three.
If where to bat whom continues to be MI's issue, who all will be fielded as batsmen is RCB's problem. Given that Kohli is back as is de Villiers, there is every reason to believe that their skipper for the last three games, Shane Watson will make way for Chris Gayle, dropped for the game against Kings XI Punjab in Indore. And as they showed last season, once all three are available and playing, RCB's batting order is fixed, Kohli and Gayle to open with de Villiers at number three.
How can you drop the skipper one may well ask? Why not, more so when the same skipper can drop Gayle, perhaps the T20 game's most destructive batsmen. That's what professional cricket is all about and all these players understand that very well. And which is why Pollard doesn't mind where he bats, he knows he has a job to do and does it as best as he can.
Rohit puzzle
It still doesn't explain why Rohit doesn't open the innings for MI and allows Parthiv Patel and Jos Butler to do so. At least with Parthiv it can be said that his batting style is best suited for the top but Butler is a finisher, so why is he starting and with Rohit around at that.
It's a question only the Mumbai Indians think tank can answer — and they do have a big think tank, almost a lakeful actually, including Sachin Tendulkar — but should they continue to win, they won't be looking to answer such questions.
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