Rajasthan Royals v Royal Challengers Bangalore: Jaiswal and Sharma to star in battle of the Royals

• Two highest IPL 2023 runscorers in action here

• Chasing an advantage in Jaipur

• 5/1 Karn Sharma has excellent strike rate with the ball

Sunday May 14, 11:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

Rajasthan Team News

Rajasthan really needed a good win during the week to get back on track and they certainly got it.

They bowled well to restrict a powerful KKR batting line-up to just 149 and made light work of the chase.

Yashavi Jaiswal may have run out Jos Buttler but he more than made up for it with an unbeaten 98 that never put the result in doubt. With 575 runs to his name so far, he's just one behind Purple Cap Holder Faf Du Plessis, who he will face here.

Earlier, Yuzvendra Chahal took four wickets en route to becoming the top wicket-taker in IPL history. The returning Trent Boult took 2-15 off three overs and they're certainly a better team with him in it.

Poor Joe Root. He finally gets a game in the IPL, has now been chalked in at 4 for two matches and didn't get to bat in either. He did however bowl two tight overs last time out.

The win put them up to fourth but there's plenty of work still to be done.

Possible XIButtler, Jaiswal, Samson, Root, Hetmyer, Jurel, Ashwin, Sharma, Asif, Boult, Chahal.

RCB Team news

RCB became the latest side to become victims of a Mumbai batting masterclass.

Virat Kohli and co would have felt they were favourites at the break after posting 199 but Mumbai got there extremely easily in the end, chasing the target in just 16.3 overs with Sky Yadav particularly destructive.

That 199 was thanks to two super knocks from Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell. But in hindsight, they maybe needed a few more on that wicket and as good as those two innings were, one of them needed to be around at the end. Both got out just before the death overs.

RCB fans may be thinking 'here we go again' as mistakes keep creeping up on them but if they win this, they'll still have a very decent chance of making the Playoffs. Lose it and it will be tough.

Possible XIKohli, du Plessis, Rawat, Maxwell, Lomror, Jadhav, Karthik, Hasaranga, Hazlewood, Siraj, Vyshak, Patel

Pitch report

After years and years of no-one getting to 200 at Jaipur, it's now happened in two of the last three matches.

The Royals' 202 was too good for CSK and last Sunday SRH pulled off a huge heist in chasing Rajasthan's 215 off the last ball courtesy of a six.

But sandwiched between that was a poor effort from the Royals on home soil, dismissed for just 118 by the Titans.

So very contrasting first innings scores and a better metric might be the first innings average score in the IPL here over the years, which is 157.7. More importantly though, there's a 66% bias towards the chaser here.

How to play

The 1.9110/11 on Rajasthan looks a somewhat decent price. They looked a better team than RCB before the tournament started, have been more consistent in terms of performances (if not necessarily results) as the season went on and will benefit from being at home here.

Still, that big toss bias makes siding with them pre-match a slightly risky bet.

So if you're going to play the winner market, getting with the Royals at around evens batting second is probably the way to go. For that you'd need a good start from RCB, though.

Can Jaiswal keep going?

When it comes to batsmen and form, some will feel that in-form batsmen are likely to carry on playing well on the back of some good scores; after all, that's what form is.

Others may feel that after some excellent knocks in a row, you're due a failure.

I believe more in the first school of thought. And that man Jaiswal is certainly a man in form.

His last seven innings have seen him pass 40 in five of them and that included scores of 77, 124 and 98.

In the top match batsman market he's got some good players to beat, including Kohli, du Plessis, Buttler, Maxwell and Samson. But he's got a big advantage over the last two in that he's an opener, has been in better form than anyone and knows this ground much better than the RCB players.

7/1 on Jaiswal for top match bat has plenty going for it.

Karn an unlikely but lively RCB Top Bowler candidate

The RCB top bowler market sees their two highest wicket-takers head the market.

Mohammad Siraj (11/4) has 15 wickets in 11 games, Harshal Patel (3/1) has 12 in 11. That man Hasaranga (also 3/1) has nine in eight having missed the first two matches of the season.

But at 5/1 you can back a man with the best strike rate of any of them.

Karn Sharma's eight wickets in five games means his strike rate is a superb 12.7 and it wasn't all down to just one big game for him.

He's taken the following number of wickets in his five matches: 2, 2, 1, 2, 1. If he takes another two here, he'll be bang in contention ad at those odds, even a dead-heat with someone else will see you bag a decent profit.