'Impact player rule has made teams, players braver and fearless'

MUMBAI: Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) all-rounder Kedar Jadhav believed that the "Impact player" rule has extended teams' capability of setting big targets.

Ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Tuesday at the Wankhede Stadium, Jadhav said that the Impact player rule has made the teams and players "braver and fearless".

"The teams have an extra batter as a cushion, so obviously they are expressing more and instead of 180 there are more totals above 200," the latest entrant to RCB said on the eve of the game," the Indian batter added.

Both teams will play the 54th match of the IPL at the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday.

RCB is in the fifth position in the points table with five wins and five losses. They have a total of ten points.

On the other hand, MI also has the same win-loss record and number of points but is down to sixth position due to an inferior net run rate. In their previous IPL 2023 match, Faf du Plessis led RCB had defeated MI by eight wickets, with Virat's 82* off 49 balls guiding the team's run chase of 172 runs. He and Faf (73) put on 148 for the first wicket, which is still the highest stand of IPL 2023.

For MI, the main concern is their skipper Rohit Sharma's batting form. He has scored only 184 runs in 10 matches with only one fifty at an average below 20. He will have to fire in order to give his team a bigger chance of winning and he has the full backing of his team.

Royal Challengers Bangalore Squad: Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis(c), Anuj Rawat, Glenn Maxwell, Mahipal Lomror, Dinesh Karthik(w), Kedar Jadhav, Wanindu Hasaranga, Karn Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Josh Hazlewood, Harshal Patel, Suyash Prabhudessai, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Michael Bracewell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Akash Deep, Rajan Kumar, Avinash Singh, Himanshu Sharma, Manoj Bhandage, Wayne Parnell, Sonu Yadav, Finn Allen, Siddarth Kaul

Mumbai Indians Squad: Rohit Sharma(c), Ishan Kishan(w), Cameron Green, Suryakumar Yadav, Tristan Stubbs, Tim David, Nehal Wadhera, Jofra Archer, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal, Arshad Khan, Kumar Kartikeya, Ramandeep Singh, Dewald Brevis, Raghav Goyal, Vishnu Vinod, Riley Meredith, Shams Mulani, Arjun Tendulkar, Tilak Varma, Hrithik Shokeen, Duan Jansen, Sandeep Warrier, Jason Behrendorff.