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Table-topping Lions start as underdogs in RCB’s fortress
- Updated: May 23, 2016
Match facts
Tuesday, May 24, 2016 Start time 2000 local (1430 GMT)
Big Picture
How do you beat Royal Challengers Bangalore in Bangalore? How do you do this when they’ve won four games on the trot? How do you do this when, in those four matches, Virat Kohli has scored 109, 75*, 113 and 54*? And how do you beat that scary, Kohli-powered Royal Challengers side, on their own turf, when your last attempt at doing so resulted in the worst defeat in all IPL matches, by a brutal 144 runs?
Those questions will preoccupy Gujarat Lions as they prepare for Tuesday’s Qualifier 1. It is unusual for a table-topping team, who are one win from a place in a final, to seem like underdogs, but that is what Lions are.
For a table-topping team, Lions have had a strange sort of season, with only Kings XI Punjab, the bottom team, ending the league stage with a worse net run rate than them. It reflects the fact that Lions have suffered a few heavy defeats – including that mauling at Royal Challengers’ hands – and won some exceedingly tight games, with three of their matches going down to the last ball. But the fact that Lions won all three of those last-ball finishes, as well as their one other match that went into the last over, would also suggest they have won the clutch moments, a welcome quality in any team.
Lions will need to summon up all that clutch ability – though readers of Moneyball will helpfully point out that it is a myth – on Tuesday, and come up with some sort of plan to contain – or somehow outscore – Royal Challengers’ batting line-up.
This is T20, of course, and all you need is one good day – a blazing opening stand, perhaps, with Brendon McCullum and Aaron Finch taking apart what is still, despite a couple of encouraging recent displays, an average Royal Challengers bowling attack; or a Suresh Raina special; or a new-ball burst that leaves the home team two down early, with …
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