Rajasthan Royals will look to bounce back from a gut-wrenching defeat to Mumbai Indians when they host Gujarat Titans at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium on Friday. 

With matches coming thick and fast in the closing stages of the league phase, the Royals will have to ensure that they use every opportunity to make the top four in IPL 2023. After a flying start to the campaign, the Men In Pink hit a few roadblocks and come into the game having won two of their last five games. This sees them placed in fourth place on the points table with 10 points from nine matches. Meanwhile, the Titans are currently on top of the IPL 2023 points table with 12 points from nine matches.

In their last meeting, the Royals broke the Titans’ jinx to register a three-wicket win in Ahmedabad. The match saw a total team performance wherein Trent Boult, Adam Zampa, and Sandeep Sharma were effective with the ball while skipper Sanju Samson and an unbeaten show from Shimron Hetmyer took the Royals home. The Jaipur crowd will expect nothing less when the visitors come with revenge on their minds.

Match details

IPL 2023: Rajasthan Royals vs Gujarat Titans - May 5, 2023

Sawai Mansingh Stadium

7:30 PM IST

Matches at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium this IPL season seems to be bucking the trend. It’s a venue where teams prefer to chase, and the numbers back this with teams batting second winning nine of the 16 IPL games since 2018. But this season, the two matches so far here have seen sides batting first walk away with full points. In the first one, while Lucknow Super Giants took home a low-scoring match, in the second, the Royals defended a handsome 202 against the Chennai Super Kings. And it won’t be a surprise if Samson backs his explosive batters yet again. 

Battle to watch out

Sanju Samson vs Mohammad Shami

One is the leading wicket-taker in the league while the other provides solidity to his team’s middle-order, and this is a battle you don’t want to miss. With 17 wickets from nine matches so far, Mohammad Shami might be leading the Purple Cap race but the Royals’ skipper Sanju Samson is among the few who have had a good run against the lethal swing bowler. 

Sanju has a great record against Shami and has scored at a strike rate of 186 against him. He isn’t shy to take the game to Shami, with a boundary every third ball. It’s a ‘high risk, high reward’ approach that the Royals skipper adopts against Shami. The last time the two faced off, Samson was in the mood and tore into the Titans’ lineup en route to his match-winning 60 that included three boundaries and six maximums. At the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, he will be keen to replicate a similar run.

Key player

Jos Buttler

After a blistering start to IPL 2023, a run that included three half-centuries in four games, the Royals opener Jos Buttler has found it hard to get going off late. Though the drop in form hasn’t hurt the team much, with a number of players chipping in with valuable contributions, Buttler’s form will be a cause of concern for the Royals as the team prepares for bigger tests with the business end of the competition fast approaching. 

Batters against Gujarat Titans

Players

Innings

Runs

Average

Strike Rate

Ruturaj Gaikwad

3

218

72.7

148

Jos Buttler

4

182

45.5

152

Sanju Samson

4

132

33.0

165

Virat Kohli

2

131

65.5

122

Venkatesh Iyer

3

111

37.0

156

And for the Englishman, the match against Gujarat Titans couldn’t have come at a better time. Buttler has done exceptionally well against Gujarat Titans in IPL with close to 200 runs against them. He is among the three players to score two or more 50s against the Titans. With a strike rate of over 150, Jos will surely look to boss the Titans’ bowling lineup at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium.

Team news

It’s a peculiar situation that the Rajasthan Royals team management finds itself in. In the words of Kumar Sangakkara, "We’re doing a lot of the things right, and that’s what we’ve got to understand. There are little periods we could get better, we can talk about it, adjust it at training, do all of that. But matches like this in T20, happen. Keep repeating the good things". While the Royals' bowlers have continued to hunt in packs, the batters have stuck to their task well. And with some impressive fielding giving the side an edge in IPL 2023, it remains to be seen if the Royals will ring in a few changes heading into their next clash against Gujarat Titans.

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