Play offs for 3rd place for this year’s IPL offers the incentive of a place in the next T20 Champions League. The Royal Challengers take on the Deccan Chargers in Mumbai on Saturday and RCB are the favourites. Team News: Bangalore Royal Challengers: Who can pick themselves after semi final disappointment? The Royal Challengers were comfortably beaten (35 runs) by the Mumbai Indians in Wednesday’s semi final whilst The Chargers fell 38 runs short when chasing a modest Super Kings total on Thursday. Both the semi finals were played in Mumbai and both were won by the side batting first. Despite the comfortable winning / losing margins in the semi finals both RCB and Deccan had their chances. RCB got the prize wicket of Tendulkar early doors and looked to be on their way to restricting Mumbai to a manageable total until a combination of slack bowling and awesome hitting saw Mumbai cut loose and eventually post 184/5. RCB were never really in the chase. Meanwhile the Chargers restricted the Super Kings to 142 and were trading deep in the red at the interval before failing miserably in the chase. Royal Challengers would look forward to Jacques Kallis rediscovering his magic touch that gave them a superb run in the earlier part of the tournament. The Bangalore team has tried out Manish Pandey and Rahul Dravid in the opening slot to accompany Kallis with mixed results. In the lower order, Robin Uthappa has given them a flourishing finish on a few occasions with his clean hitting. The team would look forward to the youngster with powerful shoulders to do the bidding against the Chargers along with Kevin Pietersen at the top. RCB skipper Anil Kumble said his team had two days at its disposal after losing by … [Read more...]