Royal Challengers Bangalore opted to field after winning the toss against Mumbai Indians in the second IPL encounter between the two teams.
Jasprit Bumrah, who has been declared fit after sustaining an injury on his left shoulder features in the playing XI with Lasith Malinga straightaway in it.
Malinga replaced Ben Cutting while leg-spinner Mayank Markande replaced teenager Kashmir pacer Rasikh Salam.
Royal Challengers Bangalore : Virat Kohli (capt), Parthjv Patel (wk), Moeen Ali, AB de Villiers, Shimron Hetmyer, Shivam Dube, Colin de Grandhomme, Navdeep Saini, Yuzvendra Chahal, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (c), Quinton de Kock (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Yuvraj Singh, Kieron Pollard, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Mayank Markande, Mitchell McClenaghan, Lasith Malinga, Jasprit Bumrah
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It was better, Virat Kohli said after Royal Challengers Bangalore’s embarrassing seven-wicket defeat in Chennai, to have got a game like that “out of the way early on”.
It was not possible, Kohli seemed to be suggesting, for all of his batsmen to fail at the same time again. Some may consider such optimism excessive but in its second game at least, against Mumbai Indians here on Thursday, RCB has reason to be confident of a better batting performance.
Batting surface
The slow turner rolled out at Chepauk was far from conducive to stroke-making, with both sides critical of the pitch afterwards. The surface at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, though, is expected to be vastly different.
Kohli's eyes lit up at the toss for India's second T20I against Australia here last month, when he gushed about the pitch resembling the “Bangalore wicket of old”. Last week, Yuzvendra Chahal predicted average scores of “190-200” for the season.
