BENGALURU: Their chances of making the playoffs still hanging by a thread, Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on table-toppers Sunrisers Hyderabad in another must-win Indian Premier League encounter, here tomorrow.
The consecutive victories over Delhi Daredevils and Kings XI Punjab have revived RCB’s hopes, while SRH has been on a roll, having won nine matches out of 12.
RCB are still languishing at the second last position on the table, while SRH are on top of the table with 18 points.
Virat Kohli’s RCB has endured a tough season, having lost seven of its 12 matches so far but the recent turnaround has rekindled hopes of a possible shot at the playoffs berth provided some other results go the team’s way.
The hosts are overtly dependant on Kohli and South African swashbuckler A B De Villiers.
The two have combined to score nearly half of RCB’s total runs this season but the side needs bigger contributions from the likes of Moeen Ali and Corey Anderson.
In peerless form, Kohli has been a standout performer with 514 runs from 12 games. De Villiers (358 runs) is next to him, although he has played two games less than the Indian.
On the bowling front pacer Umesh Yadav has delivered for the team, taking 17 wickets so far.
SRH, on the other hand, depend quite a lot on opener Shikhar Dhawan (369 runs) and skipper Kane Williamson (544 runs) for inspiration.
Williamson has been an astute leader, who would look to consolidate the team’s top spot and ensure a top-two finish at the end of the league stage.
Apart from Dhawan and Williamson, Yusuf Pathan (186), Manish Pandey (189) and Shakib-Al-Hasan (166) have also chipped in at crunch situations for SRH.
But what has been truly outstanding for SRH is their diverse bowling attack. The bowlers, led by India pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar (8), have been terrific.
Bhuvneshwar has been backed up superbly by Siddharth Kaul (13 wickets), Sandeep Sharma (8), leg-spinner Rashid Khan (13) and Shakib-Al-Hasan (12).
Given their consistent run, SRH would be expected to pull it off tomorrow but RCB, having rediscovered some form, might just spring a surprise.
The Teams (From):
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (captain), Quinton de Kock(w), Brendon McCullum, AB de Villiers, Sarfaraz Khan, Mandeep Singh, Chris Woakes, Washington Sundar, Kulwant Khejroliya, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Colin de Grandhomme, Moeen Ali, Manan Vohra, Aniket Choudhary, Navdeep Saini, Murugan Ashwin, Pawan Negi, Mohammed Siraj, Corey Anderson, Parthiv Patel, Aniruddha Joshi, Pavan Deshpande, Tim Southee.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (C ), Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddharth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Shreevats Goswami, Ricky Bhui, Basil Thampi, T Natarajan, Sachin Baby, Bipul Sharma, Mehdi Hasan, Tanmay Agarwal, Alex Hales, Carlos Brathwaite, Rashid Khan, Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Nabi and Chris Jordan.
Match starts 8pm IST. (AGENCIES)
SCIENCE-MARS-LIFE
Mars may have harboured life in past: study
LONDON, May 16:
Scientists have found traces of fatty acids – key building blocks of biological cells – in acidic streams in the UK, which they say hint that life may once have existed on Mars.
The researchers from Imperial College London in the UK concluded that there could be nearly 12,000 Olympic sized pools of organic matter on Mars that could represent traces of past life.
“Mars harboured water billions of years ago, meaning some form of life might have thrived there,” said Mark Sephton, Head of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science & Engineering.
“If life existed before the water dried up, it would probably have left remains that are preserved to this day in martian rock,” said Sephton.
Dorset in the UK is home to highly acidic sulphur streams that host bacteria which thrive in extreme conditions.
One such environment, in St Oswald’s Bay, mimics the conditions on Mars billions of years ago, researchers said.
They treated the landscape as a template for Mars and examined the organic matter preserved in rock deposits nearby.
The iron-rich mineral goethite transforms to hematite which is very common on Mars and gives the planet its red colour.
If these iron-rich minerals harbour traces of life on Earth, then they may hold clues to past microbial life on the red planet.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that goethite in St Oswald’s Bay hosted many microbes as well as traces of their fossilised organic remains.
The researchers applied these results to a martian environment.
Based on how much rock is from acid environments on Mars, and assuming the concentration of fatty acids found in martian sediments matches that of Earth, there might be up to 2.86×1010 kg of fatty acids preserved within martian rock -equivalent to nearly 12,000 Olympic-size pools.
Previous missions to find traces of life have used heat to inspect rock for the presence of organic matter.
Scientists suspect the heat might have caused minerals to react with any organic matter, explaining why we have not yet found traces of life.
However, heating goethite or hematite does not destroy any organic matter that is there, meaning these minerals could be good life-search targets.
“We have yet to find convincing traces of organic matter that would indicate previous life on the red planet,” Sephton said. (AGENCIES)
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