SRH prepare ‘Plan B or Plan C’ for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi:’RCB didn’t just win, they made a statement’, claims Anil Kumble

Royal Challengers Bengaluru booked their place in the IPL 2026 final with a 92-run win against Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 1. Next up, the attention turns to the Eliminator on 27 May, wherein Sunrisers Hyderabad will take on Rajasthan Royals. Speaking after RCB’s dominant win, Anil Kumble said that RCB’s win was a statement victory, and a morale-boosting result for the team in the knockout stages. “It was a clinical performance from start to finish. Bowling, batting, fielding – everything clicked for RCB on the night. They didn’t just win; they made a statement. That is the kind of performance you need in a knockout game,” said JioStar expert Anil Kumble on Star Sports’ Amul Cricket Live. Kumble lauds Rajat Patidar’s leadership “A player earns the respect of his teammates when he performs in the big game. Rajat Patidar has done exactly that. This first qualifier was a massive game for RCB. Winning the first qualifier and going straight to the final gives you a huge advantage. Three or four days off allows players to recover mentally and physically. That is a luxury of winning the first qualifier. Rajat has done a terrific job as captain. But what stands out about RCB is that different players step up in different games. Every match, a new player wins the Man of the Match award. That is exactly what happened last season when they won the title. When everyone contributes, you become a champion team,” Kumble added. How to stop Vaibhav Sooryavanshi? Speaking about the SRH vs RR clash in New Chandigarh, Kumble offered a valuable piece of advice to SRH captain Pat Cummins, suggesting that Praful Hinge should play ahead of Harshal Patel to counter Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. “The game that Sunrisers Hyderabad would remember dearly is the one against Rajasthan Royals of the league phase, where Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain made their IPL debuts, that was a turning point for Sunrisers Hyderabad this season. Before that game, they had a different playing combination. After bringing in those young bowlers, they found a winning formula. Hinge and Hussain tore through RR’s top order in that game. So I expect SRH might go with Hinge again in place of Harshal Patel for the eliminator. Hinge also dismissed Vaibhav Suryavanshi in his first game, which gives him a psychological edge going into the eliminator. If you compare the two teams man for man, SRH have more match-winners. Rajasthan, on the other hand, rely heavily on a few individuals – Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, and Jofra Archer. If those three don’t fire, their batting and bowling both look thin. That could be the difference in a knockout game.” SRH captain Pat Cummins himself spoke about preparing not one or two, but three different game plans to keep the Rajasthan Royals prodigy at bay. “It’s always a balance of, as a bowler, understanding what you do well and how you’re going to bowl to your strengths. But when there are probably one or two players in every lineup who can take the game away from the opposition, you do spend a little bit longer working on a Plan B or Plan C. So, yeah, we’ll plan for him. Even though he got a hundred against us last time, I thought there were times when we actually bowled quite well to him and kept him quiet. At other times, he got away from us. So, we’ll learn from that,” Cummins told Jiostar.