IPL 2022: RCB vs RR

With day 32 of the series we witnessed a royal face off between Rajasthan Royals(RR) and Royal Challengers Bangalore(RCB) at MCA Stadium, Pune.

RR was facing RCB for the second time in the series and as the previous match RCB won the toss and chose to bowl first. In the first innings, Jos Buttler and Devdutt Padikkal opened for RR but unlike previous matches Padikkal was dismissed in the 2nd over by Md Siraj and Buttler in 5th over by Josh Hazlewood. Md Siraj even dismissed Ravichandran Ashwin in powerplay. After the dismissal of openers RR skipper Sanju Samson came on crease and partnered with Daryl Mitchell in middle overs to keep the scoreboard running, but the partnership was broken in 10th over by dismissal of RR skipper by Wanindu Hasaranga. Then Riyan Parag ended the middle overs partnering with Daryl Mitchell. In the death overs, Shimron Hetmyer was dismissed after playing an over in 16th over by Hasaranga. Towards the end of the innings there were both boundaries and dismissals for RR such as Trent Boult dismissed by Harshal Patel and Prasidh Krishna by Josh Hazlewood. The first innings of RR was not as expected with early departures of openers making 144 runs.

In the second innings, there was a change in batting order as Anuj Rawat was not included in the playing 11 and he was replaced by Rajat Patidar at 3rd in batting order. Virat Kohli and skipper Faf du Plessis opened for RCB, but even after stepping up in batting order Kohli again was dismissed early in the 2nd over by Prasidh Krishna. After Kohli’s dismissal, Rajat Patidar completed the powerplay with Faf du Plessis. At the start of middle overs, Kuldeep Sen took two consecutive wickets of key players like Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell. Then Shahbaz Ahmed and Rajat Patidar rotated the strikes but that didn’t help as Patidar was dismissed in 10th over by Ravichandran Ashwin. Ashwin even took the wicket of Suyash Prabhudessai in 12th. Then came the RCB finisher Dinesh Karthik hoping to accelerate the run rate but he was dismissed in a dramatic run out sequence in the very first over he played by Yuzvendra Chahal. The middle overs were ended by Wanindu Hasaranga and Shahbaz Ahmed. By the death overs RCB’s run rate was very slow with 4 wickets helped RR to defend the total and win this match by 29 runs. In the fielding position Riyan Parag played an important role in catching out four RCB players.

In the runs progression chart we can clearly see that run rate of RCB was less than RR in every phase and as RCB were not able to have a good run rate in powerplay itself it has affected their run chasing rate in the subsequent phases as well. Frequent wickets have also played an important role in affecting the run rate of both teams.

Note: The analysis is solely number based. Climatic and field conditions are not taken into consideration.