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New Delhi: Assured of a place in the play-offs, Delhi Daredevils would look to sort out their middle-order woes when they take on a desperate Royal Challengers Bangalore in their Indian Premier League match on Thursday.
Delhi can afford to play without pressure and that is even more dangerous for Bangalore, who need to win their last two matches to qualify for the knockout stage.
Among their middle-order batsmen, Ross Taylor has been out of form and Delhi can ill-afford his continuous poor run with the bat.
With the last two league matches left before the knockout stage, Delhi would be keen to see that all their middle-order batsmen get enough overs under their belt.
Naman Ojha must have got some confidence by contributing in Tuesday's win with his cameo. The talent of Taylor, Y Venugopal Rao and Ojha is beyond doubt but now the league has reached stage where one off-day could spell ouster.
The two-three matches in the play-off stage are all important now for Delhi and their dominant show in the league stage would mean nothing, if they do not deliver in business end of the tournament.
Bangalore like Delhi too rely heavily on how their openers -- Chris Gayle and Tillakaratne Dilshan -- perform and their main issue is bowling.
Both Gayle and Dilshan are superb touch. Gayle has been in more devastating form and Dilshan has mostly carried the innings through.
AB de Villiers is other in-form batsman and a lot would depend how this trio responds to Delhi's challenge. Virat Kohli has made some little contributions
Zaheer Khan and Muttiah Muralitharan are their main weapons but others will have to chip in as the race to the play-offs is very close and a lot of teams are in contention with few matches left.
Teams from
Delhi Daredevils: Virender Sehwag (captain), Mahela Jayawardene, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Umesh Yadav, Puneet Bisht, Robin Bist, Naman Ojha (wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, Venugopal Rao, Vikas Mishra, Yogesh Nagar, Zafir Patel, Sunny Gupta, Tejashwi Yadav, Aavishkar Salvi, Kuldeep Raval, Manpreet Juneja, Pawan Negi, Prashant Naik, Aaron Finch, Andre Russell, Doug Bracewell, Glenn Maxwell, Gulam Bodi, Morne Morkel and Roelf van der Merwe.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Daniel Vettori (captain), Mayank Agarwal, KP Appanna, Prashanth Parameswaran, Arun Karthik, Raju Bhatkal, AB de Villiers (wk), Tillakaratne Dilshan, Chris Gayle, Mohammad Kaif, Abrar Kazi, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Charl Langeveldt, Andrew McDonald, Abhimanyu Mithun, Muttiah Muralitharan, Karun Nair, Dirk Nannes, M Gautam, Ryan Ninan, Asad Pathan, Luke Pomersbach, Harshal Patel, Asad Pathan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rilee Rossouw, Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad, S Thiyagarajan, Saurabh Tiwary, Vinay Kumar, Vijay Zol.
Match facts
Thursday May 17, 2012 (day/night)
Start time 20:00 local (14:30 GMT)
