Raipur (Chhattisgarh)

Defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), who have been hit by the absence of their prolific opener Phil Salt mid-season due to injury, will be aiming for their opening duo to fire during a crucial match against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at Raipur on Wednesday.

Last year in RCB's championship-winning run, the opening pair of Salt and Virat had set a standard of playing attacking cricket, despite having two very contrasting individual styles. However, this time, RCB's opening pair, which has included a young Jacob Bethell in the second half so far, has not been as prolific.

Last year, the pairing of Virat with Salt and Bethell (the latter for two matches), produced 682 runs at an average of 45.46 and a run-rate of 10.30, with seven fifty-run plus stands.

However, this season, the numbers have gone down to 332 runs in 11 innings, averaging 30.16, with a run-rate of 9.91, with only two fifty-plus stands, as per a stat from Cricbuzz. 227 of these runs have come with Salt-Kohli pairing in six innings, with a century and a fifty-run stand.

Bethell has failed to fire on the other hand, with just 70 runs in five innings at an average of 14.00 and a strike rate of 120.69, including a best score of 27 and only two 20-plus scores. Virat's brief slump in past two matches, with two back-to-back ducks, has not helped the matters either, with their highest partnership being of 34 runs against Gujarat Titans (GT).

With Salt having come back to India after undergoing scans for his finger injury, there is no certainty if he will play against KKR. But Salt or not, RCB desperately need their opening pair to click like their previous season.

Squads:

Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Ajinkya Rahane(c), Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi(w), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Kartik Tyagi, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ramandeep Singh, Tejasvi Dahiya, Navdeep Saini, Tim Seifert, Rachin Ravindra, Blessing Muzarabani, Matheesha Pathirana, Rahul Tripathi, Sarthak Ranjan, Prashant Solanki, Saurabh Dubey, Umran Malik, Daksh Kamra

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Royal Challengers Bengaluru Squad: Jacob Bethell, Virat Kohli, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar(c), Krunal Pandya, Jitesh Sharma(w), Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Rasikh Salam Dar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, Suyash Sharma, Jordan Cox, Mangesh Yadav, Venkatesh Iyer, Jacob Duffy, Philip Salt, Nuwan Thushara, Vihaan Malhotra, Abhinandan Singh, Kanishk Chouhan, Satvik Deswal, Vicky Ostwal, Swapnil Singh. (