If dealing with injuries to key players before the start of the tournament was not enough a problem, Royal Challengers Bangalore will not be helped by the congested fixture list in the Indian Premier League one bit: They play their third in five games.

Just like last season, their star-studded side have got off to a poor start, winning just one of the four games they have played so far. Incidentally, their opponents Rising Pune Supergiant also come into the game with a similar track record.

While their insipid bowling attack was the root cause of their losses during the first leg of last season, surprisingly, it has been RCB’s batting that has been exposed here. Even RCB’s solitary win so far – against Delhi Daredevils in their tournament opener – was scripted by their bowlers.

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The three-time finalists have failed to get enough runs on the board. In two of their recent encounters, it was the individual brilliance of AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli that helped the team drag their way to a respectable score.

After the sheer amount of bad blood that spilled over between India and Australia in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar series, the focus quite effortlessly veers towards Steve Smith and Kohli. After a below-par Test series against the Aussies and the subsequent shoulder injury that ensued, Kohli roared back to form with a sublime half-century against Mumbai Indians on his return.

The class that will take the field on Sunday is simply staggering: It’ll be a rare occasion where the word’s top ranked Test batsman [Smith], One-day International batsman [De Villiers] and Twenty20 batsman [Kohli] take the field.

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A high-scoring battle is certainly on the cards but it was the vicious turn off the rough areas that was one of the most notable features from the previous game played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. This encounter could well be decided by how well the in-form leg-spinners from the respective teams, Imran Tahir and Samuel Badree perform.

Royal Challengers Bangalore

  • RCB had the highest overall run-rate in IPL 2016 – 9.63. In this season, their scoring rate has been a modest 7.77 – which is the lowest among all the teams.  
  • Skipper Virat Kohli scored 188 of his 973 runs in the record-breaking season of 2016. He scored 80 off 63 balls in Pune before slamming 108 from 58 balls in Bengaluru. 
  • Opener Chris Gayle is only three runs short of getting to 10,000 Twenty20 runs. He will become the first player to achieve the feat. 

Rising Pune Supergiant

  • Ajinkya Rahane had a good run against RCB last year, registering scores of 60 and 74.
  • RPS have lost each of the nine games they have played while batting first. 
  • Smith’s side have used 18 players in the competition already, an indication that the team management is struggling to find a winning combination. 

Time: 8 pm

Venue: Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore

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

Results in 2016

Played: 2

Royal Challengers Bangalore won: 2

Rising Pune Supergiant won: 0

Squads

Royal Challengers Bangalore

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Virat Kohli (captain), AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Samuel Badree, Iqbal Abdulla, Travis Head, Sachin Baby, Avesh Khan, Tabraiz Shamsi, Pawan Negi, Tymal Mills, Aniket Choudhary, Praveen Dubey, Billy Stanlake, Harshal Patel, Mandeep Singh, Adam Milne, Sarfaraz Khan, Sreenath Aravind.

Rising Pune Supergiant

Steve Smith (captain), MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, Faf du Plessis, Ben Stokes, Imran Tahir, Mayank Agarwal, Manoj Tiwary, Milind Tandon, Usman Khawaja, Ankush Bains, Rahul Tripathi, Saurabh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, Lockie Ferguson, Daniel Christian, Baba Aparajith, Rajat Bhatia, Jaydev Unadkat, Ashok Dinda, Ishwar Pandey, Adam Zampa, Deepak Chahar, Jaskaran Singh.