Bengaluru, Mar 25 (IANS): Royal Challengers Bengaluru captain Faf du Plessis has won the toss and elected to bowl first against Punjab Kings in the first home match of their IPL 2024 campaign at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium on Monday.
RCB came into the game after losing their tournament opener to Chennai Super Kings by six wickets on Friday night. With the home teams winning all matches in IPL 2024 so far, the trend augurs well for RCB to get their first win in the competition.
After winning the toss, du Plessis said their playing eleven is unchanged, much to the delight of their ardent fans packing the stadium.
“It looks a pretty good wicket but also because of the way our team is set up. You can say that RCB hasn't won a trophy, but the ladies (RCB Women’s winning WPL 2024) broke the sealing and hopefully that motivates us.”
“The boys are excited for the season. In any game of cricket, you can't lose a cluster of wickets, we did manage to recover towards the end but that is something we have to improve on,” he said.
PBKS come into the match after beating Delhi Capitals by four wickets at their new home venue, the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, on Saturday afternoon and are also unchanged in their playing eleven.
“We would have bowled first. But looking forward to batting first now. We did a lot of right things in the first game and that's why we ended up on the winning side. We have to keep improving each game,” said skipper Shikhar Dhawan.
Playing XIs:
Punjab Kings: Shikhar Dhawan (c), Jonny Bairstow, Prabhsimran Singh, Sam Curran, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Liam Livingstone, Shashank Singh, Harpreet Brar, Harshal Patel, Kagiso Rabada, Rahul Chahar
Substitutes: Arshdeep Singh, Rilee Rossouw, Tanay Thyagarajan, Harpreet Bhatia, Vidwath Kaverappa
Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Faf du Plessis (c), Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green, Dinesh Karthik, Anuj Rawat (wk), Alzarri Joseph, Mayank Dagar, Mohammed Siraj, Yash Dayal
Substitutes: Suyash Prabhudessai, Mahipal Lomror, Karn Sharma, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Swapnil Singh