Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) were the designated home team by the virtue of being the defending champions, and not Gujarat Titans (GT), whose home ground Ahmedabad otherwise is. Rajat Patidar, thus, tossed the coin, and Shubman Gill called wrong. Turns out it wouldn’t have made too much of a difference: RCB wanted to chase, GT wanted to bat first having lost Qualifier 1 after choosing to chase and conceding in excess of 250.
While RCB were unchanged, GT brought back Arshad Khan, who missed out to Kulwant Khejroliya and R Sai Kishore on the last two occasions. It is quite likely then that there might have been a fitness issue, necessitating the introduction of Khejroliya in Qualifier 1 for his first T20 match in more than a year. GT did have Kishore in the list of possible Impact Players, which means they still had the option of bringing in the extra spinner should the pitch show signs of turning. Otherwise Prasidh Krishna was likely to come in during their defence.
RCB, who won the final last year batting first, continued to be without Phil Salt, who injured his hand in the middle of the tournament. He went home for scans, and came back, but possibly was not fully fit. In his absence Venkatesh Iyer has done a good job, including hitting the first two balls of Qualifier 1 for boundaries in a whirlwind innings of 19 off 9.
RCB also continued to keep out legspinner Suyash Sharma in favour of the extra quick in Jacob Duffy, who picked up three wickets against the same opposition in Qualifier 1.
Both sides were looking for their second IPL title. This was GT’s third final in five years of their existence.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru: 1 Virat Kohli, 2 Devdutt Padikkal, 3 Rajat Patidar (capt.), 4 Krunal Pandya, 5 Tim David, 7 Jitesh Sharma (wk), 7 Romario Shepherd, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Jacob Duffy, 10 Josh Hazlewood, 11 Rasikh Salam
RCB bench Venkatesh Iyer, Kanishk Chohan, Swapnil Singh, Abhinandan Singh, Jordan Cox
Gujarat Titans: 1 Shubman Gill (capt.), 2 B Sai Sudharsan, 3 Jos Buttler (wk), 4 Washington Sundar, 5 Nishant Sindhu, 6 Jason Holder, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Arshad Khan, 10 Kagiso Rabada, 11 Mohammed Siraj
GT bench Prasidh Krishna, Glenn Phillips, Anuj Rawat, Kumar Kushagra, R Sai Kishore
