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CAN THE ROYALS STOP 'MONSTER' RUSSELL

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RR vs KKR Match preview

Match: Rajasthan Royals vs Kolkata Knight Riders
Venue: Jaipur

Buildup
The Rajasthan Royals are coming off their first victory against the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Playing at their favorite venue once again, they will be confident off getting another victory. The Kolkata Knight Riders on the other hand have been stealing victories using Russell. However, they will want to get a victory without his contribution as well to gain more confidence.

Head to Head
Out of the 18 matches played between the two teams, both teams have gone neck to neck with 9 wins each.    
At Jaipur, the Royals have had the slight edge winning 3 out of the 5 matches played.

Player Pick
Jos Buttler, for the Rajasthan Royals, will be a key player for them to win. In the two matches at Jaipur, he has scored 69, 59 and will looking to continue on that good form on this ground.

Sunil Narine, for the Kolkata Knight Riders, will fancy his chances with the bat at the top of the order against the Royals bowling attack. This pitch will take some turn as well which will make him a dangerous bowler.

Possible Playing XI
The Rajasthan Royals will be looking to play the same team and continue their winning combination. Sanju Samson might come back into the team if he fit. They might be tempted to play Turner in place of Smith who can provide some power at the back end of the innings, but that will be a tough call to make 

RR (Possible): 1 Ajinkya Rahane (c), 2 Jos Buttler (wk),  3 Sanju Samson, 4 Steven Smith/Aston Turner, 5 Ben Stokes, 6 Rahul Tripathi, 7 K Gowtham, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Shreyas Gopal, 10 Varun Aaron, 11 Dhawal Kulkarni,

The Kolkata Knight Riders might consider playing Harry Gurney in place of Lockie Ferguson.

DC (Possibe):   1 Chris Lynn, 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Nitish Rana, 5 Dinesh Karthik (c,wk), 6 Andre Russell , 7 Shubman Gill, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Lockie Ferguson/Harry Gurney, 11 Prasidh Krishna

Pitch Expectation
The Pitch at Jaipur is expected to take some spin and with big boundaries, will not be easy to get the spinners away. But the ball will come on to the bat with pace bowlers bowling. 
Par Score: 165
Safe Score: 185+

Prediction
The Kolkata Knight Riders will start favorites for this game with the kind of momentum they have. The Rajasthan Royals in spite of winning against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, have some weakness in the bowling and depend a lot on Buttler to fire for them to win.

Tips to Win
The Rajasthan Royals will have to find a way to stop Andre Russell. They should try to use the pace of Archer and spin of Gopal against him.

The Knight Riders on the other hand, will want to use wrist spin of Chawla or Kuldeep straight away against Jos Buttler, who is the key to the Royals winning the game.


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Tags : IPL2019, RR, KKR, Russell

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