RCB and KKR to lock horns in the inaugural match of IPL 2020?

The much-awaited 2020 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2020) is only two weeks away as the tournament is slated to begin from September 19, with the final to take place on November 10 across three venues namely Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. However, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is yet to announce the schedule of the cash-rich league.

It was speculated that the IPL schedule for this season would be released at the end of August with the inaugural match to be played between defending champions Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. But after the 13 members of the CSK contingent including pacer Deepak Chahar and right-handed batsman Ruturaj Gaikwad tested positive for the novel coronavirus and their vice-captain Suresh Raina pulled out his name citing personal reasons, the BCCI decided to give some time to Yellow Army for coping up with these major setbacks.

Hence the cricket board decided to make some changes in the schedule which led to delay. A few days back, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly had claimed that the schedule would be out on September 4 (Friday) however no official statement has been made regarding why the schedule was not made public on the said date.

The delay in the release of the schedule has left the cricket fans in a dilemma regarding which two teams will feature in the opening match of the 13th edition of World’s biggest T20 league. Meanwhile, the official twitter handle of Indian Premier League (IPL) shared a graphics for raising the excitement among the cricket fans as only two weeks are left for the commencement of T20 league.

The poster features Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) skipper Virat Kohli and Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) captain Dinesh Karthik. They tweeted, “2 weeks until the #Dream11IPL extravaganza! CAN. NOT. WAIT!”

Here’s IPL’s tweet: –

Seeing this tweet by the Twitter handle of IPL, many are assuming that in the season opener KKR and RCB will be up against each other. Notably, Kolkata has clinched the T20 title two times in 2012 and 2014 and the team will be looking forward to register victory for the third time. Meanwhile, the Virat Kohli-led Challengers are yet to win their maiden title and will try to end this long wait of 12 seasons by lifting the cup in 2020.