Batsmen will hold the key in the battle of Royals at the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium on Saturday.

Both Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals have some top quality batsmen in their ranks. While the Royal Challengers can boast of Aaron Finch, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, Royals have Jos Buttler, Steve Smith and Sanju Samson to counter them.

But the conditions will test both the teams, with a bigger ground and searing heat making the job tougher.

Having played their first two games at Sharjah, the smallest of the three venues in the UAE, Royals got their strategy wrong in the game against Kolkata Knight Riders in Dubai, which has a bigger ground. Are they better prepared for Abu Dhabi?

The Royals have now understood the perils of playing on bigger grounds and their leg-spinner Shreyas Gopal accepted the fear of the unknown.

“We can’t really estimate anything sitting here, we’ve practised during the day a few times in the ICC academy, so we’ll go there and take a call there itself. It shouldn’t be too different. There might not be dew, other than that I feel it’ll be a really good wicket and a good contest,” Gopal said on the eve of the match.

With the batsmen unable to hit through the line as consistently as they could in Sharjah, Royals failed to chase 175 against KKR on Wednesday.

The Royals have a top-heavy batting line-up. All’s good when Smith, Buttler and Samson go hammer and tongs and get runs successfully, but if they fail, the middle-order looks a bit shaky, despite the presence of miracle man Rahul Tewatia.

AB de Villiers PTI

Perhaps the Royals could think of bringing in Yashasvi Jaiswal to strengthen their batting.

Both Royals and the Royal Challengers go into Saturday’s afternoon match with two wins in three games.

Like the Royals, the Royal Challengers too will be making their first appearance in Abu Dhabi.

They have made a promising start but need to improve their fielding and death bowling. Navdeep Saini bowled a tidy Super Over against Mumbai to get his team over the line after RCB leaked as many as 79 runs in the last four overs for the game to be tied.

The move to open the bowling with Washington Sundar paid off as the offie returned figures of 1/12 in four overs. And Yuzvendra Chahal is of course in sharp form.

But the biggest question that confronts RCB at the moment revolves around their captain.

When will Kohli be back among runs? They will hope the answer is — Saturday.