Rajasthan Royals want to give something special to their captain Shane Warne, who is playing his last Indian Premier League (IPL). They will depend on their impressive record at home in their bid to extract revenge from defending champions Chennai Super Kings at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium here on Monday.
Both the sides are coming into the match after losing their previous matches and a defeat for both could cost them a place in the play-offs.
Chennai are on 12 points from 10 matches, while 2009 champions Rajasthan Royals are on 11 points from 10 matches and a win will take them closer to a play-off berth.
But Royals are a motiavated lot and they want to see the last of their inspirational captain on a high.
“We want to do it for Warne. This is the ideal opportunity to give him a perfect sent-off. He’s been a great servant of cricket for 23 years
and this is the time to show him what he means to us,” an emotional Johan Botha said.
Botha felt it won’t be easy for the team to book a berth in the play-offs.
“We need to win at least three out of the remaining four matches. RCB are playing amazing cricket. We have our plans. But in T20 cricket, you never know what will happen,” the all-rounder said.
On this match being a revenge-match, Botha said: “Mike Hussey and Raina (Suresh) played great knocks in that match. We didn’t bat well too. It’s crucial to build partnerships. Now we’ve got specific plans for them. The gut feeling is that we can pull it off this time.”
“We have specific plans for each of the opposition players. We keep updating them in case one doesn’t work. That’s been the secret of our success this season. We can be very unpredictable,” Botha said.
Shane Watson, Ross Taylor, Rahul Dravid, Johan Botha and Ashok Menaria will have to fire with the bat.
Chennai also have a formidable batting line-up in Michael Hussey, Murli Vijay, Suresh Raina, S Badrinath and skipper M S Dhoni.