Rajasthan Royals need nothing less than a miracle to remain in contention for the Indian Premier League playoffs when they take on Kings XI Punjab for the second time in three days in Jaipur on Tuesday.

Three consecutive defeats have more or less sealed Rajasthan’s fate and for things to turn around for the Royals, every aspect of their game needs to improve and click for them.

They are taking on Punjab, placed third in the table, just two days after losing to them by six wickets in Indore, where neither the bowlers nor the batsmen could do a convincing job.

The lackluster performance by their batsmen and bowlers have landed them in a position where they need to win all their remaining games and also pray for favourable results in order to qualify for the playoffs.

The hosts are back on their home turf, where they have recorded two of their three victories, but three consecutive defeats would have left them demoralised.

Punjab are back winning ways after an emphatic triumph over the Royals and would look to consolidate their position in the top four. Punjab can even take the second place if they win on Tuesday, provided they improve their net run rate.

Head to head

Matches: 16

Kings XI Punjab won: 7

Rajasthan Royals won: 9

Stats and trivia

  • Mujeeb Ur Rahman’s figures of 3/27 in Sunday’s match were his best in T20 matches.
  • After hitting the fastest fifty in the IPL earlier this season (14 balls), KL Rahul hit his slowest half-century in the competition on Sunday (44 balls).
  • Karun Nair has crossed 20 seven times in eight IPL innings so far, but only once has he converted it into a fifty.
  • Rajasthan Royals hit only one six on Sunday, the fewest by any side playing an IPL match in Indore.

Quotes

“I think bowlers will get hit in this format. The ones who let me down will win me the game tomorrow. That is the only perspective I came with into this tournament and thankfully all of them are going well.”

— R Ashwin, KXIP captain

“We need to learn from this, it’s our ninth game, the bowlers are doing well but the batsmen, including me, haven’t performed well enough.”

— Ajinkya Rahane, RR captain

Squads

Rajasthan Royals: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Ben Stokes, Stuart Binny, Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, Rahul Tripathi, D Arcy Short, Krishnappa Gowtham, Jofra Archer, Dhawal Kulkarni, Jaydev Unadkat, Ankit Sharma, Anureet Singh, Shreyas Gopal, Prashant Chopra, Sudhesan Midhun, Ben Laughlin, Mahipal Lomror, Aryaman Birla, Jatin Saxena, Dushmantha Chameera, Heinrich Klaasen, Ish Sodhi.

Kings XI Punjab: Ravichandran Ashwin (c), Axar Patel, Yuvraj Singh, Karun Nair, Lokesh Rahul, Chris Gayle, David Miller, Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Mayank Agarwal, Ankit Rajpoot, Manoj Tiwary, Mohit Sharma, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Barinder Sran, Andrew Tye, Akshdeep Nath, Ben Dwarshuis, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar, Manzoor Dar.

With inputs from PTI and IPLT20.com