With the halfway stage of the tournament rapidly approaching, both sides will view the match as a significant encounter in terms of their league standings.

With the defending champions playing at home, Royal Challengers Bengaluru will want to exploit the familiar conditions in their final home league match this season before a sustained period playing on the road. Their batting has been among the most powerful in the tournament so far but recently, on the two-paced surfaces at Chinnaswamy, quick scoring has not been as simple at the start. The Bangalore franchise will have to play intelligently during the first power play, with aggressive approaches previously backfiring on them and victory will offer significant momentum ahead of leaving their home comforts.

On the contrary, the Gujarat Titans have looked extremely dependent on their top-order trio-Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill, and Jos Buttler-this season. Their team looks quite dominant whenever these three are in the run-scoring form, but they seem to lack depth in the middle order, which has looked extremely shaky of late. This means that with Sai Sudharsan not in his prime this season, the pressure on the top-order has increased manifold. Gujarat Titans will be aiming for an early breakthrough to target RCB's batting approach against slow pitches if the pitch continues to assist bowlers early in the innings.

At the toss, Bengaluru have won and chose to bowl first. Bethell comes in for Salt in RCB, while Holder makes hi GT debut at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Here's what the captains said at the toss:

Rajat Patidar:

"I just feel this will be a bowl-first pitch. And as you all know, chasing gives us a lot of clarity about the result, the score and the total. One change - Salty got injured, Bethell is in. I think one great point that I like is that we are assessing the wicket and assessing the situation pretty well this year. And of course, there’s a lot of planning behind it. t’s pretty obvious. Whenever you come here at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, it’s a good wicket to bat on. But I think there’s no grass on it, so first innings it might be tacky a bit."

Shubman Gill:

"Not really. I mean, generally on this ground, teams that have been chasing have had good success. But I think this looks like an even wicket. So hopefully it’outside the leg-stump be a good game for us. Honestly, not really. It’s all about assessing the conditions early. And if you get off to a good powerplay, then you can build on that. So I think that’s the challenge for us. If you get off to a good start, then just keep mounting on that. Games like that in such a big tournament can happen (on the match against MI). But I think it’s very important to keep reminding ourselves of the things that, as a team, bring us the best success and the best result. And those are the things that we’outside the leg-stump be focusing on. we have got a couple of changes. Jason Holder comes in, he’s making his debut for us. And Manav Suthar comes back."

RCB vs GT Playing XI

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (Playing XI): Virat Kohli, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar (c), Jitesh Sharma (wk), Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, Suyash Sharma, Rasikh Salam Dar

RCB Impact subs: Jacob Bethell, Jordan Cox, Mangesh Yadav, Vicky Ostwal, Venkatesh Iyer

Gujarat Titans (Playing XI): Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Washington Sundar, Shahrukh Khan, Jason Holder, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Manav Suthar, Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Siraj

GT Impact subs: Prasidh Krishna, Anuj Rawat, Glenn Phillips, Nishant Sindhu, Arshad Khan