He Royal Challengers Bangalore will wear their green jersey with a special theme later today when they face the Riders of the Knights of Calcutta at the Eden Gardens stadium later today. RCB hopes that their new team can bring good luck to the team after an extremely poor start to the IPL 2024 season.
While Bengaluru will be looking for just their second win of the season, KKR’s opponents will be looking to do the double over the South Indians.
In their first match against the Knight Riders at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, RCB suffered a one-sided 7-wicket defeat on March 29. That defeat came 4 days after defeating the Punjab Kings at home, which remains the only match they have won in this edition.
If they lose one more match or, say, today’s match, Faf du Plessis’ team will officially be out of contention to reach the IPL play-offs for the second consecutive season.
How has RCB performed in the green jersey?
While jerseys don’t really have much to do with the game of Cricket and sports in general except for the way the season has gone for RCB, perhaps a change in their threads can help them bring about a change.
One can also be superstitious about this jersey, but Bengaluru’s actual track record in that kit does not seem encouraging and does not support them to achieve a victory today.
Of the 13 matches they have played in the Go Green initiative jersey since the 2011 season, RCB have been on the suffering side rather than in the celebration zone.
They have only won 4 times with that jersey; the first came when they debuted their strings in 2011 against the Kochi Tuskers Kerala in Chinnaswamy. But they had to wait for 5 long seasons to get their second win with the team and they did so emphatically against the Gujarat Lions by 144 runs.
But in 2022 and 2023, RCB won the Go Green jersey games against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals respectively and that makes it the fourth.
Now in terms of losses, Bengaluru has lost 8 matches against Mumbai, Punjab, Chennai, Kolkata, Rajasthan and Delhi. In fact, they suffered two of those 8 defeats against their opponents today: first by 6 wickets in 2017 and then by 9 wickets in 2021.
So with a new jersey in the Super Sunday afternoon match, RCB will also hope that God Sun is in their favor and helps them at least win the match that is theirs.
Can we see another 200+ score at Eden Gardens?
Although the average score at Eden Gardens is 160-170, but the way this season has gone, it will be fair to say that the crowd in Kolkata could also witness another match of over 200 people.
The stadium has been a good batting surface over the years and earlier this season, Hyderabad had posted a total of 208. And the chance of witnessing another batting massacre will only be possible if KKR bats first.