All eyes will be on Rajasthan Royals' batting order on Friday, when they take on Royal Challengers Bengaluru in their IPL 2026 fixture in Guwahati. RR are in top form this season under new full-time skipper Riyan Parag. RR are on top of the points table after three matches, having won all their games.
RR opener Yashasvi Jaiswal is on top of the Orange Cap race with 170 runs in three matches, at an average of 170.00 and 163.46 strike rate. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has also been in dominant form this season, scoring 122 runs in three matches at 248.97, with an average of 40.67.
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For RCB, it will be key to remove both RR openers early. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who is the leader of RCB's pace attack, doesn't have a good record against Jaiswal, Parag and Dhruv Jurel in T20s. He has never been able to dismiss them, conceding 161 runs.
To make matters worse for RCB, Sooryavanshi has the best strike rate of any batter in the powerplay since IPL 2025. His strike rate of 227.35 is way ahead of Priyansh Arya, whose strike rate of 180.46 is the second-best.
The match is also set to witness two of the most explosive death-overs six-hitters since IPL 2026. No player has hit more than Tim David's 19 between overs 17 and 20. Meanwhile, Jurel has slammed 13, but his role has changed, and he has moved from the lower order to No. 3.
Speaking ahead of the match, RR bowling coach Shane Bond said, "It's been a great start, actually. I think when you start every IPL campaign, particularly on the back of a tough one last year, it always brings a little bit of nervous energy. I think not only the fast bowling group, but the bowling group in general and the team have played really well."
"There's a quiet confidence about the way we're going about things. I think as soon as you've got more wins than losses in this competition, you can relax a little bit. Even off the field, it means guys can tend to open up a little bit more. We're still spending a lot of time talking about the areas we can improve, which is good when you're 3-0 rather than the other way around."
Praising Parag for his captaincy skills, he said, "I think the captain takes a fair bit of credit. I've really enjoyed the way Riyan Parag has managed the bowlers in particular. We've talked a lot about making sure we're getting throw overs quick enough to give him the time to have that communication, especially as a new captain, to get to understand the bowlers and manage those pressure situations. There's a lot of data and information out there as well."
"We want to make things reasonably simple, pretty simple game plans. Obviously, we've got some bowlers with some different strengths, but head coach Kumar Sangakkara talks a lot about assessing the conditions. Even though we've got these plans, it's the conditions first, and then we go about executing after that."