Royal Challengers face another stiff challenge, Kings rearing

Chennai, May 20 (UNI) Confident of emerging the ultimate winner and boasting of the best combination among the eight teams in fray, as their brand ambassador former India captain K Srikanth averred, Chennai Super Kings, would be in all probability driving the last nail into the Bangalore Royal Challengers coffin in the race for the last eight berth, in the IPL match at the M A Chidambaram stadium here tomorrow.

The Super Kings, as coach Keppler Wessels said at the pre match press conference today, are a relieved lot as they would be having skipper M S Dhoni in the batting line up after being ruled fit from the injury sustained in the match against team Kolkata. The dropped team India stumper Parthiv Patel, who has been opening the batting first with Matthew Hayden and now with Stephen Flemming, would be standing behind the stumps.

In addition to guiding the team as captain, Dhoni has been the crucial cog in their wheel of batting line up which is now depending on Suresh Raina,Morkel, Vidyut and the local lad Badrinath. The Super Kings as well as the home crowd would also be looking for an encore from Badri who played a scintillating innings and pace bowler L Balaji's who registered the first hat-trick in IPL, when the team played last on home turf. The local fans have been nearly filling up the 45,000 capacity stadium for every match so far.

The despondent mood in Team Bangalore was evident from the fact that skipper Rahul Dravid stayed away from the pre match press conference. Instead he deputed IPL debutant Srivatsava Goswami.

The latter rued the fact that the team had lost some closely fought matches and hence the bad situation.

While the Super Kings, presently third in the points table behind Team Rajasthan and Team Punjab, have 14 points from 11 matches, Royal Challengers have just four from ten.

Teams(from): Bangalore Royal Challengers: Rahul Dravid(Capt), S Chanderpaul, Ross Taylor, Jack Kallis, V Kohli, Mark Boucher, Praveen Kumar, Vinay Kumar, Zaheer Abbas, Sunil Joshi, Anil Kumble, Misba-ul-Haq, Dale Stein, Wasim Jaffer, N C Aiyappa, Andrew Noffae, Abdul Razaq, Srivatsav Goswamy, Arunkumar, D Patel, K P Appanna, Bharat Chipli, Akhil, Camerron White.

Chennai Super Kings: M S Dhoni(Capt), Stephen Flemming,Parthiv Patel, Suresh Raina, Albie Morkel, Muthiah Muralitharan, S Badrinath, Vidyut Siva, Joginder Sharma, M S Goni, M Ntini, Chamara Kapugedra, S Anirudha, P Amarnath, L Balaji, P Arun Karthik, Abhinav Mukund.

Match begins at 2000hrs.

UNI VV RAR NS2007