Royal Challengers Bangalore middle-order needs to deliver against formidable Lucknow Super Giants

Lucknow : Royal Challengers Bangalore will aim to shed the over reliance on their celebrated top-order when they face a belligerent Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL match here on Monday.

RCB have struggled to maintain momentum provided by Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell, who have done all the scoring in the eight games so far. With most teams bunched up closely in the standings, the margin for errors has reduced in the second half of the competition.

Kohli, du Plessis and Maxwell can't be expected to do the job in every game and it is high time the likes of Mahipal Lomror, Shahbaz Ahmed and Dinesh Karthik step up. The fielding and catching too needs to improve, something which was pointed by Kohli himself after the loss to KKR.

Squads

Lucknow Super Giants: KL Rahul (c), Kyle Mayers, Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya, Amit Mishra, Nicholas Pooran (wk), Naveen ul Haq, Ayush Badoni, Avesh Khan, Karan Sharma, Yudhvir Charak, Yash Thakur, Romario Shepherd, Mark Wood, Swapnil Singh, Manan Vohra, Daniel Sams, Prerak Mankad, Krishnappa Gowtham, Jaydev Unadkat, Marcus Stoinis, Ravi Bishnoi and Mayank Yadav.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis (c), Akash Deep, Finn Allen, Anuj Rawat, Avinash Singh, Manoj Bhandage, Michael Bracewell, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dinesh Karthik, Siddarth Kaul, Virat Kohli, Mahipal Lomror, Glenn Maxwell, Mohammed Siraj, Wayne Parnell, Harshal Patel, Suyash Prabhudessai, Rajan Kumar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Karn Sharma, Himanshu Sharma, Sonu Yadav, Vijaykumar Vyshak, David Willey.