The Royal Challengers brought in Saini to go hard at the batsmen with his pace in the middle overs
Toss Chennai Super Kings chose to bat vs Royal Challengers Bangalore
Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni opted to bat in the day game in Mumbai citing “heat” as one factor and the pitch potentially slowing down later as another. Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli was “pretty happy” to bowl first and said they had stacked their bowling attack accordingly.
Both sides made two changes each. The Super Kings were without the injured Moeen Ali, their second-highest scorer and most economical bowler with four wickets so far in the tournament. Imran Tahir replaced Ali whereas Dwayne Bravo came in for Lungi Ngidi.
The Royal Challengers brought in hard-hitting allrounder Dan Christian for the finisher’s role in place of Kane Richardson, and fast bowler Navdeep Saini for Shahbaz Ahmed. Kohli said with Kyle Jamieson, Harshal Patel and Mohammed Siraj already in the XI, Saini was included to “go hard at the batsmen in the middle overs” with his pace. It will be Saini’s first match of this IPL.
It was also only the second time a team chose to bat at Wankhede Stadium since 2017.
Chennai Super Kings: 1 Faf du Plessis, 2 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 Ravindra Jadeja, 6 MS Dhoni (capt, wk), 7 Sam Curran, 8 Dwayne Bravo, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Imran Tahir, 11 Deepak Chahar
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Virat Kohli (capt), 2 Devdutt Padikkal, 3 Glenn Maxwell, 4 AB de Villiers (wk), 5 Washington Sundar, 6 Dan Christian, 7 Kyle Jamieson, 8 Harshal Patel, 9 Navdeep Saini, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Mohammad Siraj
Vishal Dikshit is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo