Royal Challengers Bengaluru suffered a big blow ahead of their IPL 2025 match against Delhi Capitals at Arun Jaitely Stadium on Sunday. RCB’s star opener and wicketkeeper Phil Salt missed the game due to illness. Salt was down with fever that saw him miss the crucial match as the winner between the two teams will take the top spot in the IPL 2025 points table. The news of Salt’s absence was shared by RCB captain Rajat Patidar after the toss for the game took place. Patidar won the toss and elected to bowl against DC.
Salt, who was bagged by RCB for a whopping sum of Rs 11.5 crore at the auction held last year, has played a instrumental role in providing flying start to the side in batting. In 9 matches, he has scored 239 runs at an average of 26.56 and a strike rate of 168.31.
“We will bowl first. The wicket is quite good to bat on and I don’t think it’s going to change too much and we like to chase. It’s our first win at our home and we will try to continue playing good cricket. In every match, we are trying to improve, so we want to keep learning. (Jacob) Bethell has come in place of (Phil) Salt,” said Patidar.
While Patidar felt that batting second was a right decision on the surface, DC captain Axar Patel thought otherwise.
“That is an advantage too but if we had won the toss, I think we would have batted only and use the wicket in the second innings. In the last game, there was no dew but in the game against Mumbai, there was some dew. They (LSG) had two foreign batters at the top so I wanted to bowl against them. I was bowling with a good rhythm, the plan wasn’t to bowl four overs in a row but I kept bowling well so I continued with it. Faf (du Plessis) is back and the Impact player we will decide according to the situation,” said Axar.
Hosts Capitals are placed second in the points table, just above their equally formidable rivals.
Teams:
Delhi Capitals’ Playing XI: Axar Patel (C), Faf du Plessis, Abishek Porel, Karun Nair, KL Rahul (wk), Tristan Stubbs, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Kuldeep Yadav, and Mukesh Kumar.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s Playing XI: Rajat Patidar (C), Virat Kohli, Jacob Bethell, Romario Shepherd, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Tim David, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Suyash Sharma, Josh Hazlewood, and Yash Dayal.
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