Toss Report: RCB vs KXIP

Toss Report: RCB vs KXIP

Bengaluru: Kumar Sangakkara, captain of Kings XI Punjab, has won the toss and decided to bat first.

Sangakkara decided to bat first as he felt the pitch was good. “Nice to see pitches like this. Encourages bowlers. We need to make sure that we bat the full twenty overs,” he said at the toss. The KXIP skipper elaborated that KXIP had the batsmen to do it.

Anil Kumble, captain of RCB, greeted the home crowd a Happy Ugadi – the New Year’s Day for people of Karnataka. He said, “It is a good surface. It has good bounce. It should be a good batting track.” He added that the wicket came across as a sticky one and that this was a good toss to lose. “We need to restrict them to 140 to 150. This would be a decent score to chase. Even if they score more, we can chase it,” he said, exuding confidence.

Cricket commentator Ravi Shastri said that he would have batted first on this pitch. He added that the wicket looked good and should stay good for the entire 3 to 4 hours.

Kings XI Punjab opener Ravi Bopara commented on the humid conditions, saying, “The boys are dripping and their t-shirts are soaking wet.” On the wicket, the Englishman said, “At the moment it looks really good, not much grass on it. Hopefully we will get a really big score.”

Starting XI

RCB

Anil Kumble (captain), Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher (wk), Manish Pandey, Vinay Kumar, Robin Uthappa, Rahul Dravid, Dale Steyn, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Eoin Morgan

Kings XI Punjab

Kumar Sangakkara (captain), Yuvraj Singh, Mahela Jayawardene, Irfan Pathan, S. Sreesanth, Ravi Bopara, Manvinder Bisla, Mohammad Kaif, Bipul Sharma, Yusuf Abdulla, Piyush Chawla.