For Risin Pune Supergiant it will be about holding on to the top bracket in the points table. Royal Challengers Bangalore should be mindful of the fact that they can still make it. RCB desperately need their big guns to fire. It seems Virat Kohli will be better off playing one-down and allowing Mandeep Singh to open. Virat is needed to anchor the innings as that has been missing. Gayle of course is past his prime. For RPS, Faf du Plessis may get a game, last time he played but he was wasted as he did not get to bat.
RPS would also be hoping for a big nock from Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the absence of Ben Stokes, who could have been a big player. Ben Stokes, who injured his shoulder in the game against Mumbai Indians on Monday, is likely to miss next couple of matches.
RCB face multiple problems as their bowler have not looked threatening, that puts added pressure on the batsman.
In their three meetings so far, Royal Challengers hold a 2-1 edge, having won both their matches against Rising Pune last year. This is the first of the double-header Saturday and the match starts at 1600 hrs.
The likely XIs
Rising Pune Supergiant: 1 Ajinkya Rahane, 2 Rahul Tripathi, 3 Steven Smith (capt), 4 Faf du Plessis, 5 MS Dhoni (wk), 6 Manoj Tiwary, 7 Dan Christian, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Imran Tahir, 11 Jaydev Unadkat
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Chris Gayle/Travis Head, 2 Virat Kohli (capt), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Pawan Negi, 7 Samuel Badree, 8 Tymal Mills/Adam Milne, 9 S Aravind, 10 Aniket Choudhary, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
