IPL 2019: Predicting the opening combination for each team

#3 Royal Challengers Bangalore (Parthiv Patel and Virat Kohli)

Virat Kohli opened the batting last season

Ever since Chris Gayle was released from Bangalore's books, the opening position has been an issue for the Karnataka based franchise. Parthiv Patel, who has a decent amount of experience as an opener in the IPL is expected to be the first choice.

Parthiv has played as an opener for top franchises like Chennai and Mumbai. He has been relatively successful for them. However, the other opener might be swapped according to the need of the situation.

But we can expect them to go with Kohli who has been in the form of his life since the 2016 edition. It is wise to make your top player bat as many overs as he can to pile up a substantial score.

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#2 Mumbai Indians (Suryakumar Yadav and Evin Lewis)

Yadav was quite successful last season

Last season Mumbai surprisingly started with Suryakumar Yadav and it turned out to be a good decision. The Mumbai born batsman scored over 500 runs for them last season.

The same is expected to continue this season also. On the other hand, West Indian Evin Lewis had a decent season last year, chipping in with 382 runs. However, he failed to convert his starts into big scores.

If he can improve on this, it will be a huge bonus for Mumbai who have a strong middle order. Apart from these two, they have captain Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan who can fill the opening slot if needed.