IPL 2019: Bottom-Placed Rajasthan Royals Travel To Chennai Super Kings Den

In Sunday's second IPL 2019 match, upbeat Chennai Super Kings will host laggards Rajasthan Royals. The two teams have had contrasting fortunes till now. CSK have won both their matches, while RR have lost both of theirs. The other crucial factor in this match will be how the Chepauk track behaves. The first match of this season, played between CSK and RCB at this venue, saw a total of 141 runs scored between the two teams. Questions were raised as to whether the pitch could be considered to be conducive to T20 cricket.

On paper, it appears that the CSK vs RR tie will be decided in the battle between the home team's bowling attack and the away team's batting. 

Sunday's match will be CSK's second at home, and MS Dhoni's side will again be looking to their spinners to make some early impacts. Harbhajan Singh, Imran Tahir and Ravindra Jadeja were almost unplayable against RCB, and one can expect Dhoni to turn to one or more of those three in the powerplay overs.

For Rajasthan, the onus will be on their star batsmen to fire again. In their first match, they seemed to be on course for victory against Kings XI Punjab, but suffered a surprising batting collapse and eventually to a 14-run defeat. On Friday, Sanju Samson's ton overshadowed his more illustrious teammates.

CSK and RR have played 20 matches against each other so far, with CSK having won 12 and RR having won 8.

Squads

Chennai Super Kings: Harbhajan Singh, Shane Watson, Dwayne Bravo, MS Dhoni (c), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Murali Vijay, Karn Sharma, Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu, Imran Tahir, Faf du Plessis, Deepak Chahar, Sam Billings, Mohit Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Dhruv Shorey, Monu Kumar, Mitchell Santner, Chaitanya Bishnoi, N Jagadeesan, Ruturaj Gaikwad, KM Asif

Rajasthan Royals: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Dhawal Kulkarni, Stuart Binny, Steven Smith, Jos Buttler, Varun Aaron, Jaydev Unadkat, Ben Stokes, Sanju Samson, Manan Vohra, Prashant Chopra, Ashton Turner, Ish Sodhi, Krishnappa Gowtham, Rahul Tripathi, Shreyas Gopal, Liam Livingstone, Shashank Singh, Mahipal Lomror, Shubham Ranjane, Oshane Thomas, Jofra Archer, Riyan Parag, Aryaman Birla, Sudhesan Midhun

Match starts at 8 pm IST

Topics mentioned in this article

Chennai Super Kings Rajasthan Royals IPL 2019 Chennai Super Kings vs Rajasthan Royals, Match 12 Cricket