Focus on out-of-form Kohli in RCB-RR clash (IPL Match 15 Preview)

Abu Dhabi, Oct 2 (IANS/GloFans) All eyes will be on Virat Kohli, captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), who has failed to fire so far in the 13th IPL, when his team clashes with Rajasthan Royals (RR) here on Saturday. He has managed just 18 runs in three matches and it is high time he played a big knock. Will it be a ‘Saturday Special’ innings from him? With two wins each from three games, both RCB and RR will aim to outdo each other when they square-off at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium here on Saturday. Despite having equal number of points (four), the Steve Smith-led RR are sitting at the fourth spot, a place above the Kohli-captained RCB (run rate -1.450), thanks to their better net run-rate (-0.219).
RR won their first two games that they played in Sharjah, the smallest of the three venues being used, and then they faltered against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their previous match in Dubai.
After the first two convincing wins, KKR handed RR a reality check and their top-order with the likes of Sanju Samson, skipper Smith, and Jos Buttler failed to keep the momentum flowing. Young sensation Rahul Tewatia, too, disappointed and same was the case with Robin Uthappa, who has completely failed to fire in this season so far, having managed just 16 runs from three games.
It’s not that RR doesn’t possess a quality batting attack; they just failed to adapt to the conditions in Dubai, which has a far bigger boundary than Sharjah and Smith’s team will look to learn from their mistakes to muscle out RCB on Saturday.
Against KKR, Jofra Archer was quite impressive after bagging two for 18 runs and he needs to start from he left. However, the other RR bowlers — Ankit Rajpoot, Jaydev Unadkat, Tom Curran and Shreyas Gopal — had a below-par outing and they need to tighten their seat belts against a side which boasts of explosive hitters like AB de Villers, Aaron Finch, Shivan Dube, and Devdutt Padikkal.