Toss Royal Challengers Bengaluru chose to bowl vs Lucknow Super Giants

RCB are unchanged, meaning Jacob Bethell will continue to open the batting with Virat Kohli in Phil Salt’s absence. Salt has flown home for scans on his injured finger and could return towards the business end of the competition.

Pant felt this was a “180-190 wicket” which he felt was “better [red-soil wicket] than most of the other games.”

“We know we’re a top team, but the main thing is clarity,” Pant said about finding themselves at the bottom of the points table. “We have a few changes in the batting order. Having a stable environment is needed, but we need to make changes at times.”

A win tonight for RCB will take them to the top of the standings; it’s likely a win won’t be enough for LSG to lift themselves off the bottom of the table.

LSG batting-first XI: 1 Mitch Marsh, 2 Arshin Kulkarni, 3 Nicholas Pooran, 4 Aiden Markram, 5 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), 6 Akshat Raghuwanshi, 7 Himmat Singh, 8 Shahbaz Ahmed, 9 Digvesh Rathi, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Prince Yadav

LSG’s Impact player options: Mayank Yadav, Mukul Chowdhary, Abdul Samad, M Siddharth, Avesh Khan.

RCB bowling-first XI: 1 Virat Kohli, 2 Jacon Bethell, 3 Devdutt Padikkal, 4 Rajat Patidar (capt), 5 Jitesh Sharma (wk), 6 Romario Shepherd, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Josh Hazlewood, 10 Suyash Sharma, 11 Rasikh Dar

RCB’s Impact Player options: Tim David, Jordan Cox, Mangesh Yadav, Vicky Otswal, Venkatesh Iyer