RCB, KKR look for momentum

Bengaluru, March 28: Victory in their respective previous games might have eased the initial nerves but imperfections remain, hence Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Kolkata Knight Riders will eye a quick course correction to add steam to their campaign in an IPL 2024 match here on Friday.

The Royal Challengers defeated Punjab Kings by four wickets, while the Knight Riders elbowed out Sunrisers Hyderabad by four runs to garner some early points.

But entering the points table has not really eased some of the worries — particularly pertaining to the top and middle-order batting.

The Bengaluru dugout might be a happy space after star batter Virat Kohli made a classy fifty on an unusually gripping Chinnaswamy pitch while chasing 177 against Punjab the other night, but that’s only one part of the story.

Skipper Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell, Cameroon Green and

Rajat Patidar are yet to hit the overdrive, and for the win against PBKS they had to rely on the lastminute cameos of Dinesh Karthik and ‘Impact Player’ Mahipal Lomror.

The Kolkatans have a much more capable bowling unit, at least on paper, and such a collectively underwhelming effort by frontline batters might push RCB into deep troubles against them.

Once they iron out that rough edges, RCB can look at their bowling unit that still needs to fill a couple of unticked boxes despite good outings by pacers Mohammed Siraj and Yash Dayal against Punjab.

Pacer Alzarri Joseph continues to be profligate and his figures — 0/38, 1/43 — might prompt the RCB think-tank to bring in England left-arm quick Reece Topley, who has impressive white-ball skills, in place of the West Indian for this match.

The Knight Riders offer a strikingly similar plot. Their top and middleorder consisting of captain Shreyas Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine and Nitish Rana malfunctioned against SRH at the Eden Gardens.