Bengaluru, April 24 (IANS) Rajasthan Royals (RR) have brought in left-arm pacer Fazalhaq Farooqi as stand-in captain Riyan Parag won the toss and elected to bowl first against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Thursday.

While RR, in eighth place in the points table, are aiming to break their four-match losing streak, RCB are searching for their first home win of IPL 2025. If RCB manages to finally win at Chinnaswamy Stadium, they will jump to third place in the points table.

After winning the toss, Parag said Farooqi comes in for off-spinner Maheesh Theekshana. “The wicket looks a bit sticky and should get better later on. It’s back to our ethics now; if we can give our 100 percent, the results will take care of themselves. Sanju (Samson) bhai is recovering. We are taking it game by game and hopefully, he will be back soon,” he said.

RCB skipper Rajat Patidar, who lost his fourth consecutive toss at home in IPL 2025, said his playing eleven is unchanged.

“We would have loved to bowl first as well. The surface has been tricky and unpredictable this season, and we will try to adapt as quickly as we can. We have to be good at shot selection,” he said.

Before the toss, RR had handed a debut cap to uncapped wicketkeeper-batter Kunal Singh Rathore. With his name in the impact substitutes, it would be interesting to see if he comes in for the chase. The match will be played on the centre pitch, with the down the ground boundary at 73 metres while the square boundaries are at 64 metres.

Playing XIs:

Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Virat Kohli, Phil Salt, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar (capt), Romario Shepherd, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Tim David, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, and Yash Dayal

Impact Substitutes: Suyash Sharma, Rasikh Salam, Manoj Bhandage, Jacob Bethell, and Swapnil Singh

Rajasthan Royals: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubham Dubey, Nitish Rana, Riyan Parag (capt), Dhruv Jurel (wk), Shimron Hetmyer, Wanindu Hasaranga, Jofra Archer, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Sandeep Sharma, and Tushar Deshpande

Impact Substitutes: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Yudhvir Singh, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, and Kunal Singh Rathore

–IANS

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