Quick Stats : M23 - MI vs SRH

Having won fifty percent of their matches so far, the Delhi Daredevils are in the middle of the Pepsi IPL 2015 standings, while their opponents on Sunday evening, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, are still in the bottom half of it. However, the visitors are a strong side with the likes of Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli, besides Mitchell Starc, who spearheads the bowling attack. The Daredevils will have to put their best foot forward to beat the power-packed RCB lineup and maintain their position in the top half of the points table.

RCB come into the game on the back of a convincing win against Rajasthan Royals and will draw confidence from the win. The Daredevils too will be high on confidence having registered a win at home after nine consecutive losses. Asked how the hosts would be looking to tackle the visiting team, DD all-rounder, Angelo Mathews said, “We have to play the same way as we did in the last game.

We have to go out there, be positive and aggressive and play with lot of freedom.”“Regardless of who the opposition is, we have to play our best cricket to win a game. And we did that in the last game.

We played good cricket in the last game. So we will look to try and emphasise on those things.”They will be challenged by Mitchell Starc, who is back in the side after a brief injury lay-off and was the key factor in RCB’s last win.

While the likes of JP Duminy, Yuvraj Singh and the Sri Lankan captain have been around and dealt with fearsome attacks successfully, in comparison DD top-order batsman are relatively inexperienced. But Mathews lauded his young teammates’ run so far and backs them to perform against the likes of Starc. “I don’t know about us international cricketers, but the top-order are the ones who are scoring a lot of runs for us.

Mayank (Agarwal) has been really good, Shreyas (Iyer) has been tremendous. They play with a lot of freedom. From the coaches to the captain, they have created an environment where even the youngsters can go out there and express their freedom.

”Speaking about the explosive batsmen in the RCB lineup, he said, “We have got a few plans for them. But we have to go out there and be aggressive, try to take wickets all the time. You can’t really contain because you have seen in the past, most teams have dominated in the last six or seven overs if they still have wickets in hand.

So, as I said before, you need to try and take wickets early on and look to take wickets all the time.”“They have got some really good batsmen up their sleeves and if they get going it’s really hard to stop them. So we have got to find ways to stop them, and attack them early and get them early.

”The Daredevils leg-spin twins – Imran Tahir and Amit Mishra - have been posing problems to oppositions, and were joined by Shahbaz Nadeem in the playing XI in their last game. Asked if DD will field three spinners again, Mathews replied, “I don’t really know about the team composition because it depends on the wicket out there and the team management will decide accordingly. But whoever goes there is capable of winning the game, so we back all of them.

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