IPL 2013: Battle of contrasts as confident Bangalore face struggling Delhi

Strong contenders Royal Challengers Bangalore face a woefully out-of-form Delhi Daredevils as they resume their IPL campaign here on Tuesday following a heart-breaking defeat against Chennai Super Kings.

A big no-ball by R P Singh in dying minutes of the match had deprived Bangalore from an exciting win. It was second close defeat for Bangalore, having lost another thriller via Super Over to Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Hosts Bangalore are expected to face some good resistance from Delhi since the visitors are the only side to not have won a single game this season and would do everything to get on board.

Having lost all four games, Delhi have no option but to go all out as one more defeat would make their journey more tougher, so they will throw anything and everything they have against Bangalore.

Skipper Virat Kohli and explosive Chris Gayle have done extremely well for the side so far but Bangalore need other batsmen to fire and bowlers need to be more efficient.

Over-reliance on top-order may hurt them. Building partnerships is the way forward for Bangalore so they need Mayank Agarwal and Karun Nair to bat well in the middle order.

They also need their other foreign recruits such as Tillakratne Dilshan and Daniel Christian to stand up and counted.

As far Bangalore's bowling is concerned, they have bowled well as a unit but struggled in death overs. This was quite evident in the match against CSK where Vinay Kumar, Ravi Rampaul and R P Singh bowled far too many length balls and in process conceded 53 runs in last five overs.

The team may consider making some changes and pick from among Abhimanyu Mithun, Abhinav Mukund, Andrew McDonald, Christopher Barnwell, Daniel Vettori, Harshal Patel, K P Appanna, Pankaj Singh and P Prasanth, who have warmed the bench so far.

It would be crucial for Bangalore Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan gets hi mojo back and Murali Kartik better his performance.

Placed right at the bottom of points table, Delhi will look to end their losing streak.

The Daredevils have failed to put up a total to make a match out of it and for this to happen, their top order needs to fire.

They badly need Virender Sehwag, who can change the complexion of the game quickly, to start the re-building work.

Coming into the last game after recovering from back spasm, Sehwag hardly made any impact scoring just 12 against Hyderabad. The "Nawab of Najafgarh" needs to rise to the occasion and pull his team out of the pits.

Their foreign players also have not made any significant contribution, except for David Warner, who blasted 77 and 61 against Rajasthan and Mumbai.

Skipper Mahela Jayawardene also has not been in good touch. He has managed just one half-century in the tournament opener against Kolkata.

Andre Russell, Morne Morkel, Jeevan Mendis and Johan Botha`s combined score reads a paltry 52 runs in four matches. The absence of Kevin Pietersen and Jesse Ryder has also compounded Delhi's problems.

The visiting team has a good pace battery with gangling Morne Morkel, Umesh Yadav, Irfan Pathan and Ashish Nehra but they haven't made any impact yet.

Teams from:

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (C), Abhimanyu Mithun, Abhinav Mukund, Andrew McDonald, Chateshwar Pujara, Christopher Barnwell, Daniel Vettori, Harshal Patel, KP Appanna, Moises Henriques, Chris Gayle, Tilkaratne Dilshan, Mayank Agarwal, Daniel Christian, Karun Nair, Arun Karthik, J Unadkat, Vinay Kumar, Muttiah Muralitharan, Murali Kartik, Pankaj Singh and P Prasanth.

Delhi Daredevils: Mahela Jayawardene (C), Ajit Agarkar, Andre Russell, Arisht Singhvi, Ashish Nehra, C M Gautam, David Warner,Gulam Bodi, Irfan Pathan, Jeevan Mendis, Johan Botha, Kedar Jadhav, Manpreet Juneja, Naman Ojha, Pawan Negi, Roelof van-der Morwe, Royston Dias, Siddharth Kaul, Sujit Nayak, Shahbaz Nadeem Umesh Yadav, Unmukt Chand, Venugopal Rao, Virender Sehwag and Yogesh Nagar.