Chennai: When Royal Challengers Bangalore take on Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 2025 match, the team will be eyeing to end the 17-year wait for victory here. RCB has defeated CSK only once at its home ground MA Chidambaram Stadium and that too in the first season of the tournament in 2008. In the current RCB team, only star batsman Virat Kohli was a part of that match and now he would like to break the fort of Super Kings for the second time. This ground is also named Chepauk Stadium.
How will the pitch of MA Chidambaram Stadium be?
In IPL, there is a rain of runs on almost every ground. However, this is not the case with MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. There is a lot of help for the bowlers here. It is not easy to score runs against spin bowlers here. Chennai has two experienced spinners in the form of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. Apart from this, there is an excellent chinaman bowler in the form of Noor Ahmed. This trio performed well against five-time champion Mumbai Indians a few days ago.
Talking about Royal Challengers Bangalore, their spin attack consists of Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma. Krunal won the Player of the Match award by taking three wickets against KKR in the last match. Suyash Sharma also bowled Andre Russell. Due to the pitch helping spin bowlers, RCB can also field Swapnil Singh in this match.
Virat Kohli has struggled against spin
RCB's batting order will have to be more clever than being all-out aggressive against Super Kings' three-pronged spin attack and Kohli will have to lead them. Facing spin has not always been Kohli's batting strong point but in the last two years he has shown a lot of improvement in this department. The main reason for this change is his willingness to play more sweeps and slog sweeps against spinners and Kohli will have to show all his expertise in the match on Friday evening.
Kohli will also need support from batsmen like Phil Salt, captain Rajat Patidar, Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma. Considering the Chepauk pitch, RCB may possibly include Jacob Bethell in the XI in place of Tim David who also offers the option of left-arm spin bowling. The team will also be eyeing the fitness of fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar who missed the first match against Kolkata Knight Riders due to injury and if the experienced fast bowler is fit, he will be included in the XI in place of Rasikh Salam.
IPL record of MA Chidambaram Stadium
- Total matches- 86
- Team batting first won- 49
- Team chasing won- 37
- Team winning the toss won- 43
- Team losing the toss won- 43
- Highest team score- 246/5, CSKvs RR
- Lowest team score- 70/10, RCB vs CSK
- Highest individual score- 127 runs, Murali Vijay
- Best bowling spell- 5/5, Akash Madhwal
- Average score while batting first- 163 runs
Middle order batting a concern for Chennai
On the other hand, Super Kings will hope for their middle order to get back into form as Shivam Dubey, Deepak Hooda and Sam Curran failed to make an impact against Mumbai Indians in the last match. They will have to get more support from Rachin Ravindra and captain Ruturaj Gaikwad and also hope for another effective innings from Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Chennai Super Kings will also be monitoring the fitness of premier pacer Mathisha Pathirana, who missed the match against Mumbai.
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