These teams are fire. Delhi Capitals once struggled to find an identity for themselves. Now they are the home of young Indian batting geniuses. Rajasthan Royals see-sawed from one extreme to the other, not so much a cricket team as an unruly teenager. But now mum's put her foot down - yes, we want you to picture Kumar Sangakkara as mum - and they've
finally promised to behave.
Sanju Samson threatened to exceed those expectations
on Monday, when he stayed calm even though he couldn't time the ball at the start of his innings. By the end of it, he wasn't so much a man with a piece of wood in his hand, he was King Kong with an axe. If the new captain can reprise this zen at the crease for, say, a full season, the Royals are going to be trou-bleeee.
The Capitals probably aren't too worried though. They have got monsters of their own. Well-rested ones too. Hear them roar in T-minus 24 hours. Give or take.
Ben Stokes wows the world with his acrobatics. He doesn't need to. He's got power. He can banana swing the ball. But he still insists on trying to be the best fielder in the world and hurt his finger to rule himself out of the IPL. The Capitals' Axar Patel is unlikely to take any part in this game as he continues to recover from a bout of Covid-19.
Rajasthan Royals: 1 Jos Buttler, 2 Manan Vohra, 3 Sanju Samson (capt & wk), 4 Liam Livingstone, 5 Shivam Dube, 6 Riyan Parag, 7 Chris Morris, 8 Rahul Tewatia, 9 Shreyas Gopal, 10 Chetan Sakariya, 11 Andrew Tye/Mustafizur Rahman
Delhi Capitals: 1 Prithvi Shaw, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Ajinkya Rahane, 4 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), 5 Marcus Stoinis, 6 Shimron Hetmyer, 7 Chris Woakes, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Amit Mishra, 11 Avesh Khan
A T20 opener needs to get off the blocks quickly. But from 2008 to 2013, Shikhar Dhawan's strike-rate in the powerplay was just 118. Perhaps that was a function of him playing second fiddle to the likes of David Warner when he was at Sunrisers Hyderabad. However, since his move to the Capitals in 2019, he too has become a fearsome ball-basher, with a strike-rate of 143 in the first six overs. Among those who have taken at least 30 wickets in the IPL, Rabada's strike-rate of 13.1 is the absolute best. He even manages to improve on that while doing the most difficult part of his job - death bowling, where he conjures a wicket every eight balls.