Rajasthan Royals predicted XI against KXIP - Debut expected

Rajasthan Royals predicted XI - Ajinkya Rahane would want his middle order to fire and the pace bowling to step up.

Rajasthan Royals have not been able to find any momentum this season, but they should be a confident unit after having eased past Mumbai Indians in their previous encounter. Jos Buttler is the man in form for them and now they would ideally want their Indian bowling contingent to step up.

File image of Rajasthan Royals side (AFP)

Also, the form of the middle order has not been very consistent and this is where Rahane’s boys have to fine-tune their game against Kings XI Punjab.

Shreyas Gopal has been a revelation for them this season and his role in the middle overs becomes very critical. The leggie has not only controlled the scoring rate, but has also chipped away at the wickets, which has allowed Rahane to use him as an attacking option. He now needs the support of the other bowlers around him.

“Jofra is a different kind of a bowler, he’s really quick and one of the fastest in the world. The other bowlers, they’re bowling really well now. They had a couple of bad matches but they are bowling well. One thing is that they bowl the hardest overs of the match. In the context of powerplay and death overs, fast bowlers take majority of the load and they bowl the crucial overs. So it’s okay to go at eight and nine (an over) sometimes,” Gopal said in the eve of the match.

There is no update on the availability of Ben Stokes, hence it would be interesting to see if they persist with Liam Livingstone or hand a debut to Ashton Turner.

Here is the predicted XI of the match:

Ajinkya Rahane (c), Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson (wk), Steven Smith, Rahul Tripathi, Ashton Turner, Krishnappa Gowtham, Jofra Archer, Shreyas Gopal, Jaydev Unadkat, Dhawal Kulkarni