IPL 2025: Yudhvir comes in as Rajasthan Royals elect to bowl against Chennai Super Kings

New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) Rajasthan Royals (RR) have won the toss and elected to bowl first against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Tuesday. Both RR, playing their last game of the season, and CSK would be aiming to avoid the ignominy of being the wooden spooners of the competition.

The match, where both teams are on six points each, will also see the oldest and youngest players of IPL – CSK skipper MS Dhoni and Rajasthan Royals’ opener Vaibhav Suryavanshi in action.

After winning the toss, RR skipper Sanju Samson said pacer Yudhvir Singh Charak comes into their playing eleven, with Fazalhaq Farooqi going out.

“Looking at the last game against DC, there was something in it. There's no hiding in this game (on losing eight out of nine games while chasing). We've got to do it today. Everyone has to be a match-winner. They have to think like that. We need to be smarter and braver,” he said.

Dhoni, who got a massive roar from the majorly yellow-wearing crowd at Kotla, said they will be seeing this game as an extension of seeing the players who can serve them well for future seasons. Pacer Matheesha Pathirana is likely to be CSK’s impact player when they come to defend the total later in the match.

“We want to express ourselves in our batting department. Need to figure out which individual will do well in which slot next year. Need to work on our bowling. Once we were out of the tournament, we wanted to find the answers for the next year.”

“Need to look into the combination and a couple of players we can pick in the auction. We are on a roll in the batting department, and we want to continue doing that. We struggled at the start of the season. When you are constantly under pressure, that doesn’t work. You don't need to play all kinds of shots, you need to be selective,” he said.

Tuesday’s match will be played on pitch number five, where square boundaries are 63m each, and 72m is the size of the boundary down the ground. In the pitch report, Simon Doull and Graeme Swann said the strip is dry, has a slight bit of grass, and a few tiny cracks.

Playing XIs:

Chennai Super Kings: Ayush Mhatre, Devon Conway, Urvil Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Dewald Brevis, Shivam Dube, MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Anshul Kamboj, Ravichandran Ashwin, Noor Ahmad, Khaleel Ahmed

Impact substitutes: Matheesha Pathirana, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Ramakrishna Ghosh

Rajasthan Royals: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Sanju Samson (capt & wk), Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel, Shimron Hetmyer, Wanindu Hasaranga, Kwena Maphaka, Yudhvir Singh Charak, Tushar Deshpande, Akash Madhwal

Impact substitutes: Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Kumar Kartikeya, Shubham Dubey, Ashok Sharma, Kunal Singh Rathore

--IANS

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