Sunrisers Hyderabad v Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL Tips: RCB prone to disaster

• Bangalore in play-off hunt

• Shahbaz to get Sunrisers in a spin

• Du Plessis to shine with bat

Sunrisers Hyderabad v Royal Challengers Bangalore
Thursday 18 April, 15:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

Team news

Sunrisers have specialised in chaos and confusion, a cricketing equivalent of a Psy-Op. They jettisoned Harry Brook, quite rightly, for Glenn Phillips and then dropped him after three matches. It's some achievement that in their final match of the season they don't know their best XI.

Possible XII: Anmoplreet, Abhishek, Markram, Tripathi, Klaasen, Sanvir, Samad, Jansen, B Kumar, Markande Farooqi, Natarajan *Potential subs

Bangalore are bang in the mix for a play-off spot and they couldn't have wished to be playing Sunrisers at a better time. They have to go hard with the bat in the first six because they have a chronic lack of depth and form. Shahbaz Ahmed, the slow left-arm spinner and useful bat, could be included as a sub.

Possible XII: Kohli, Du Plessis, Maxwell, Lomror, Karthik, Bracewell, Rawat, Shahbaz, Parnell, Sharma *Potential subs

Pitch report

The Hyderabad surface has been fair to bat and ball. In the seven games four have seen first-innings scores of more than 170. With doubts about both teams' batting units an unders play on a par line at around 173.5.

A standout wager is around under 48.5 on Sunrisers' six-over score. RCB have been mean and SRH have been the opposite of magnificent.

How to play

Bangalore are a six-over team. They can go quickly in the powerplay with Faf Du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell to the fore. And they can be economical with the ball thanks to Mohammad Siraj.

It's just the other 28 overs that may be a problem. Forgive us, then, if we swerve the 1.738/11. Laying RCB in-play at skinnier odds outside of those twin sets isn't a bad strategy.

Tops value

Sunrisers have had a significant problem with slow left-arm spin. Three man of the match awards have gone to that style of bowler when playing against them.

Against Lucknow, Krunal Pandya turned the tide in another Sunrisers loss. So Shahbaz has to be considered at 11/2 for top Bangalore bowler and 14/1 for man of the match.

With the bat, Virat Kohli and and Aiden Markram have been boosted to 23/10 and 16/5 respectively. Du Plessis has an excellent record against the projected SRH attack, however, and there are no fears about backing him for top bat at 12/5 or over 27.5 runs at 5/6 depending on your preference.