Royal Challengers Bangalore will look to keep their IPL hopes alive as they face Rising Pune Supergiant in Pune on Saturday. Bangalore, who are being led by RCB, lost six out of their nine games and are seventh on the table with five points.

They still have a chance of qualifying for the playoffs if they win all their remaining matches and hope other results go their way.

Rising Pune Supergiant are in fourth place with eight points but will look to put their inconsistency to rest. Both teams come into this match with defeats in their previous game. While RPS lost to the Kolkata Knight Riders, RCB lost to the Gujarat Lions in the last clash.

Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers can destroy any bowling attack on a given day and given Pune’s shoddy bowling performances in the past, the trio can have a field day on Saturday.

However, Bangalore are low on confidence and Steve Smith will expect his bowlers to get the job done. With Imran Tahir, Ben Stokes, Jayde Unadkat and Shardul Thakur in their ranks, Pune have the edge against Bangalore.

Time: 4 pm

Venue: MCA Stadium, Pune

TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD channels

Head-to-head

Played: 3

Bangalore: 2

Pune: 1

Royal Challengers Bangalore

  • Royal Challengers Bangalore have now been bowled out three time in the IPL this season. The last time they were bowled out thrice in an IPL season was in the inaugural season in 2008.  
  • Bangalore have won all their IPL matches in Pune. The most by them at any venue where they haven’t lost a game.  

Royal Challengers Bangalore squad: Virat Kohli (captain), AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Vishnu Vinod, Sreenath Arvind, Kedar Jadhav (wk), Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Iqbal Abdulla, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tymal Mills, Aniket Chaudhary, Praveen Dubey, Billy Stanlake.

Rising Pune Supergiant

  • The Rising Pune Supergiant opener Rahul Tripathi is the only batsman to make 5 consecutive scores of 30 in the ongoing IPL season.  
  • Pune’s highest run scorer Steven Smith has scored only 22 runs off 26 balls with a strike-rate of 84.61 against Yuzvendra Chahal, Royal Challengers’ highest wicket-taker so far.  

Rising Pune Supergiant squad: Steve Smith (capt), Ajinkya Rahane, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (WK), Ashok Dinda, Faf du Plessis, Mayank Agarwal, Ankit Sharma, Baba Aparajith, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Deepak Chahar, Rahul Chahar, Dan Christian, Lockie Ferguson, Imran Tahir, Jaskaran Singh, Usman Khawaja, Saurabh Kumar, Ben Stokes, Washington Sundar, Milind Tandon, Manoj Tiwary, Adam Zampa, Jaydev Unadkat, Ishwar Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Shardul Thakur.

“I am sure he (Stokes) must be available but I am not sure about his physical condition. Reason is that definitely the assessment is being taken by the physio and he is going to take the final call. I am sure Stokes must be looking forward to tomorrow’s game but I can’t give you 100 percent assurance. Because as far as the tournament is concerned and the matches which we are supposed to play, we have to look at how many matches he can skip and still remain fit,” said Rajat Bhatia, RPS all-rounder