IPL 2019: The combined training camp of RCB and Afghanistan cricket team

With the IPL tentatively to kickstart from the 23rd of March, as announced by the BCCI, all teams are getting ready with their preparations. Meanwhile, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have already organized its 5-day camp from Sunday and also played a practice match on Tuesday. They played this practice match against Afghanistan on February 3, in which they faced a defeat by 28 runs.

Afghanistan batting first scored a challenging total of 181 in 20 overs. Captain Asghar Afghan was the top scorer of the innings with 47 runs. Apart from him, Hazratullah Zazai and Samiullah Shenwari contributed 43 and 26 respectively.

In reply, RCB's team did not start well and kept losing wickets in regular interval of time. RCB finished with 152 runs in 20 overs and lost the match by 28 runs. For RCB, only Himmat Singh batted with courage and scored 65 runs, but he did not get any support from the other end. Afghanistan's chinaman bowler Zaheer Khan took three wickets.

In case you don't know, RCB has organized this 5-day camp from February 3 at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. The camp is going on under the supervision of team coach Gary Kirsten and Ashish Nehra. The players taking part are Washington Sunder, Akshdeep Nath, Devdutt Pallikal, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Himmat Singh, Kulwant Khajroliya, Milind Kumar, Prayas Ray Barman, and Shivam Dubey. Work is being done on the fitness of the players in the camp. Yo-Yo test will also be conducted under the guidance of trainer A.I. Harsha, Evan Speechly and Shravan Kumbagowdana during the camp.

While it was a warm-up match for the RCB, Afghanistan will have to play three-match T-20 series, five-match ODI series and one-match series against Ireland, which starts in the month-end. It will be the last series for these two countries before the World Cup. Therefore, the Afghan team has already put up a training camp in Bangalore prior to this series. A total of 40 players are participating in this camp.