Royal Challengers Bangalore will be striving to keep their IPl hopes alive when they meet an equally inconsistent Rising Pune Supergiant in an IPl encounter, here on Saturday.
Virat Kohli's team has lost six out of their nine games and are second-last on the table with five points in their kitty.
For RCB, a defeat will mean that the tournament will be as good as over. They still have slim hopes if they can win all their remaining five games and hope for some favourable results from the other games.
Rising Pune Supergiant are slightly better off with eight points from eight games with four wins in their kitty. But even RPS has been inconsistent at one level. They have been good on certain days and very ordinary on other days.
Skipper Steve Smith will like to address that issue when they face RCB, who are already down in the dumps after a string of defeats.
Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers can destroy any bowling attack on a given day and RPS save Ben Stokes (6 wickets) and Imran Tahir (10 wickets), don't have much to write home about.
In the batting department, the find of the season for Pune has been local boy Rahul Tripathi, who has scored 216 runs in six games but more importantly at an impressive strike-rate of 154.28 which includes 24 boundaries and eight sixes.
Only Smith with 275 runs has scored more than him. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has mustered only 152 runs at a strike-rate of 120. India international Ajinkya Rahane's form has also been a concern as he has been able to score only a single 50 batting at the top of the order in all the matches. There will also be some pressure on Stokes to prove his whopping price tag of Rs 14.5 crore. He has bowled some really good overs including superb death bowling against MI which earned him Man of the Match award.
But he has been a bit off-colour when it comes to batting having scored only 127 runs in eight games.