Champions League T20 2011 Cricket Live: Royal Challengers Bangalore V Mumbai Indians Preview

Royal Challengers Bangalore will fight out for the championship with Mumbai Indians in the final of the Champions League T20 2011 to be played on October 9.

Venue: M Chidambaram, Chennai

Date: October 9, 2011

Time: 2000 hours local time, 1430 hours GMT onwards

The Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians Champions League T20, 2011 match will be shown live on Star Cricket in India. You can also watch the Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians live streaming here as well.

Previous Results:

The Royal Challengers Bangalore have been able to get to the final despite losing their first two games. They started off the tournament with losses to the Warriors and the Kolkata Knight Riders. This was followed by a turnaround win over Somerset that helped their net run-rate so much that after they had defeated the South Australian Redbacks and tied with the Warriors and Kolkata on the net run-rate, they still made it through to the semi-finals.

In the semis, they chased down a target of more than 200 against the Warner-led New South Wales Blues to get to the final.

Mumbai Indians were a side that had a host of injury woes going into the tournament but seem to have gelled better as a team. They won their opening couple of games and shared points in the third before losing to the New South Wales Blues.

Then, in the semi-final, they bowled really well to successfully defend a total of 160 against Somerset.

Key Players:

Bangalore will rely on the batting prowess of Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli but they will need to be a tad wary of the track at Chennai, which will be far slower. This could just be the venue where their under-fire bowling could come good, especially with the likes of Sreenath Aravind and Abhimanyu Mithun having conceded aplenty so far.

On the other hand, the Mumbai Indians need a lot from their captain, Harbhajan Singh. He hasn’t had the best tournament with the ball, but some of his captaincy has been aggressive and it would be interesting to see how he handles the sledgehammer by the name of Gayle.

And they will miss...

Bangalore will need to adapt to the pitch at Chennai, where the game will be played. So far, they have played all their games at Bangalore itself where the pitches are as easy to bat on as any in the world, while the one at Chennai is a touch sluggish. How they would wish for a much easier track for their batsmen.

They may miss the five-foreign player rule that was changed for them this tournament – despite the win in the semi-final, the batting looks far too thin in the middle-order.

Prediction:

Bangalore should go into the game as favourites to clinch the trophy.

For the rest of the schedule, format and timings for the Champions League T20, 2011, click here.