Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore will be playing the first match of the Indian Premier League this year. Defending Champions Chennai will look to retain their trophy and would want to start the tournament with a win. The first match will take place on March 23 at Chennai’s M.A. Chidambaram Stadium.
Chennai Super Kings' crucial bowler Lungi Ngidi was ruled out of the IPL 2019 after he faced a Grade II muscle strain during an ODI match against Sri Lanka. It would be interesting to see who will CSK play instead of Protea pacer. Our pick would be Imran Tahir, a spinner from South Africa as well.
Here’s the predicted playing XI for the first match:
CSK Playing XI for Dream 11: Faf du Plessis, Shane Watson, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni (WK), Kedar Jadhav, Dwayne Bravo, Imran Tahir, Deepak Chahar, Ravindra Jadeja, Karn Sharma
RCB Playing XI for Dream 11: Parthiv Patel (WK), Moeen Ali, Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers, Shimron Hetmyer, Shivam Dube, Pawan Negi, Tim Southee, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal
The dates for 2019 edition of Indian Premier League has been announced by the organisers. However, the dates announced are only for first seventeen matches, where each team will play a minimum of 4 matches each while Delhi and Bangalore will play five matches. Every team will play two away and two home matches with Delhi playing three home matches and Bangalore playing three away games.
RCB squad for 2019: Virat Kohli (C), AB de Villiers, Shimron Hetmyer, Moeen Ali, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Mohammed Siraj, Marcus Stoinis, Tim Southee, Colin de Grandhomme, Yuzvendra Chahal, Akshdeep Nath, Parthiv Patel, Milind Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Pawan Negi, Navdeep Saini, Shivam Dube, Heinrich Klaasen, Gurkeerat Singh, Washington Sundar, Himmat Singh, Kulwant Khejroliya
CSK squad for 2019: MS Dhoni (C), Suresh Raina, Imran Tahir, Shane Watson, Sam Billings, David Willey, Murali Vijay, Ravindra Jadeja, Deepak Chahar, Faf du Plessis, Rituraj Gaikwad, Narayan Jagadeesan, KM Asif, Shradul Thakur, Druv Shorey, Mohit Sharma, Dwayne Bravo, Karn Sharma, Monu Kumar, Lungi Ngidi, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Ambati Rayudu, Harbhajan Singh, Kedar Jadhav, Mitchell Santner
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