IPL 2018 RR v KXIP: 5 player battles to look forward to between Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab
After having lost a tight game against the Kings XI Punjab on Sunday, bottom-placed Rajasthan Royals will face the same opponents in a must-win game at Jaipur tonight. The Rahane-led side were undone by an outstanding innings from KL Rahul on Sunday but they must get their act together if they are to have any chance of somehow making it into the top-4 this season.
The stars in the RR line-up need to deliver tonight and it will be tough against KXIP, who are at third place but would want to push into the top-2 by the end of the league stage.
Ultimately, the game is going to be decided by some of the individual clashes that will take place tonight between the stars from either side and here is a look at 5 of the most important ones.
#5 Ajinkya Rahane v Ravichandran Ashwin
The RR captain may have failed in his previous innings but in his latest game at home, he made an unbeaten 65 against Sunrisers Hyderabad, albeit in a losing cause. In addition to that, he has an excellent record in Jaipur and has a T20 average of 45.8 at the venue. Hence, RR would expect him to come good in this crunch game, and now that he is batting at number 3, he would most probably run into a battle with his opposite number Ravichandran Ashwin in tonight’s game.
The duel between India team-mates will be an absorbing one and will definitely have a big say on the RR batting effort. While Mujeeb Ur Rahman has rightly hogged the spotlight, Ashwin has gone about is job quietly and has provided KXIP attack with a degree of control in the middle overs. He has only given away 7.69-an-over and although he has not taken many wickets (6 in 9 games), his spells have proven to be very important. It remains to be seen how he performs against Rahane tonight.