IPL 2018: Match 3, Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bangalore – Statistical Preview

Royal Challengers Bangalore will begin the hunt for their maiden title in the 2018 IPL by taking of the Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens. Dinesh Karthik will be the skipper of Knight Riders for this season. Both the sides have strong batting line-ups but the home team have an edge thanks to an all-round bowling attack and the advantage of playing at home.

Key stats and numbers to be looked out ahead of the first game at the Eden Gardens of the season:

1 – Only once Kolkata Knight Riders lost while chasing since 2013 in the IPL at the Eden Garden. In the previous five seasons, KKR won 12 games while chasing at their home ground before losing to MI in the last year’s final league game by nine runs.

11-9 – The win-loss record of Kolkata Knight Riders against Royal Challengers in the IPL. Their win-loss record against RCB is 5-3 in the IPL games played at the Eden Gardens.

18 – Number of wickets Piyush Chawla bagged against the RCB in the IPL. Ashish Nehra (23) and Harbhajan Singh (18) are the other two players to take as many wickets as Chawla in the IPL against the RCB.

19.71 – Yuzvendra Chahal’s bowling average in the Twenty20 format since the start of the 2016 IPL. He bagged 70 wickets in the 47 T20s in this span at an economy rate of 7.92.

26.06 – Virat Kohli’s batting average of 26.06 against Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL. He scored 391 runs against them in 17 IPL innings with two fifties. Only Yuvraj Singh (24.12) has a lower average than Kohli in the IPL against KKR. (Min: 350 runs)

150 – The KKR-RCB game will be the 150th game in the Indian Premier League for Robin Uthappa. He featured in 14 games for MI, 31 for RCB, 46 for PWI and 58 for KKR in the first ten seasons of the IPL.

150 – This game will be the 150th IPL game for Virat Kohli as well. The RCB skipper featured for the franchise in all the ten editions of the IPL.

167.80 – Batting S/R of RCB’s Colin de Grandhomme is 167.80 in the Twenty20 format which is the highest for any other player. KKR’s Andre Russell’s S/R of 164.38 is the 2nd highest behind Grandhomme in this format.

8992 – Brendon McCullum needs to score eight more runs for becoming the second player with 9000 runs in the Twenty20 format.