The first game of the League stage of the Champions League T20 - the second round - will have the Bangalore Royal Challengers face the Victorian Bushrangers. Bangalore will be going into the game carrying forward no points, whereas Victoria has two points to their name.

The Royal Challengers know that a loss here would mean that Victorian Bushrangers will have four points from two points, whereas they, themselves will have zero from two, and with a possibility of going out of the tournament. This means that this will also be a knock-out game for the Challengers.

However, they will have an advantage. To begin with, they have been playing at the Bangalore wicket for some time now and have a fair idea on how the wicket is going to play. In contrast the Victorians have had both their games at the Feroz Shah Kotla, on which the ball has barely come on to bat and this has made the run-scoring difficult. This also means that both, the batsmen and the bowlers have a huge task on their hand in order to adapt to this new challenge.

The Challengers have been going good with their batting line-up. The advantage they have is that they possess batsmen of both natures - aggressive and solid. So, if a Jacques Kallis or a Rahul Dravid can bat through the innings, then they also have the likes of Ross Taylor and Robin Uthappa to smash a few balls out of the park. Taylor has been in supreme touch and has blasted off in both the games he has played in, which means that the Victorians would have made some plans for him. This also means that to counter that, Anil Kumble may want to juggle the batting around a bit and get in some other batsmen to smash a few up the order.

The bowling has been managed by Anil Kumble and Reolf van der Merwe, but one gets a sense that Dale Steyn could be unleashed on the batsmen for tomorrow's game.

For the Victorian side, it is going to be interesting to see how they go about on wickets which may not assist their quick bowlers. They do possess a battery of spin bowlers who can do a good enough job, in Holland, and the other part time bowlers. This includes David Hussey, Brad Hodge and Cameron White, all of whom can do a bit of bowling.

The batting will be in the hands of Hodge as well, and one can expect a big enough innings from him.

Tag :- Anil Kumble   Bangalore royal Challengers   Champions League T20   Dale Steyn   David Hussey   Jacques Kallis   Victorian Bushrangers