Rajasthan Royals Desperate To Turn Things Around

Indore, May 14: Still in with an outside chance of making it to the play-offs, a bruised Rajasthan Royals will be eyeing nothing less than a victory when they take on an inconsistent Kochi Tuskers Kerala in their crucial IPL match here tomorrow.

Rajasthan are currently placed at the fifth position in the team standings with 11 points from 12 games. But to qualify for the play-offs, the Shane Warne-led side first will have to win their remaining two games and hope that some other results go in their favour.

Going into tomorrow's day-night encounter, Rajasthan, however, will be low on confidence having suffered a hat-trick of defeats -- twice against Chennai Super Kings (by eight wickets and 63 runs) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (by nine wickets) in their last games.

But the Jaipur outfit will have to forget their last three games and lift their performance to a new level tomorrow to give them any chance of playing in the next stage of the Twenty20 tournament.

Against Kochi at the Holkar Stadium tomorrow, Rajasthan can take heart from the fact that they defeat the Kerala team comfortably by eight wickets in their previous IPL encounter.

Batting is Rajasthan's biggest asset in the ongoing IPL but so far it has been inconsistent with big names like Shane Watson, Rahul Dravid and big-hitting Ross Taylor performing in bits and pieces. They badly need the trio to fire in the coming two matches in order to give them any chance in the tournament.

Young Ajinkya Rahane, however, has provided some solidity in the middle but after the initial burst South African all-rounder Johan Botha has gone into a shell.

Rajasthan's problems were further compounded by their lacklustre bowling unit which lacked sting in the absence of a world-class bowler, barring Warne.

With 12 wickets from 11 games, veteran Warne has been Rajasthan's best bowler in the tournament so far but he lacked quality support from the other end.

Kochi, on the other hand, are virtually out of the play-off race after slumping to a six-wicket defeat against Kings XI Punjab last night.

Kochi have garnered 10 points from 12 games and are presently lying in seventh position in the standings with still two games to go.

Kochi have had a roller-coaster of a ride so far in the tournament. After some impressive wins, they suffered back-to-back defeats against Royal Challengers Bangalore (by nine wickets) and most recently against Kings XI Punjab, which jolted their play-off chances.

Kochi's batting has been far from impressive despite having big names like Brendon MCCullum, Brad Hodge, Parthiv Patel and Owais Shah.

Captain Mahela Jayawardene has been the lone bright spot in Kochi batting line-up, which was evident from his masterly 52-ball 76-run innings against Kings XI yesterday.

All-rounder Ravindra Jadeja also seems to struggling after some good performances, adding to Kochi's problems as his explosive batting comes in handy down the order.

Kochi bowling also doesn't look any more formidable with left-arm seamer R P Singh being a major letdown, although he took four wickets in the last match.

Besides, Jayawardene has also had to deal with temperamental pacer S Sreesanth, who threw tantrums after being dropped from the playing eleven against Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Even though Sreesanth was selected in yesterday's match against Kings XI, he did very little to prove his worth giving away 38 runs in 3.5 overs without any success.

Teams (from):

Rajasthan Royals: Shane Warne (capt), Swapnil Asnodkar, Stuart Binny, Johan Botha, Deepak Chahar, Ankeet Chavan, Aakash Chopra, Aditya Dole, Nayan Doshi, Rahul Dravid, Samad Fallah, Faiz Fazal, Ashok Menaria, Sumit Narwal, Jacob Oram, Pankaj Singh, Amit Paunikar, Ajinkya Rahane, Abhishek Raut, Dinesh Salunkhe, Pinal Shah, Amit Singh, Shaun Tait, Ross Taylor, Siddharth Trivedi, Shane Watson and Dishant Harendra Yagnik.

Kochi Tuskers Kerala: Mahela Jayawardene (capt), Brendon McCullum, Parthiv Patel, Brad Hodge, Ravindra Jadeja, Kedar Jadhav, Thisara Perera, Raiphi Gomez, Rudra Pratap Singh, Ramesh Powar, VVS Laxman, Sreesanth, Muttiah Muralitharan, Owais Shah, Steven Smith, Balachandra Akhil, Deepak Chougule, Gnaneswara Rao, John Hastings, Michael Klinger, Chandan Madan, Sushant Marathe, Steve O'Keefe, Tanmay Srivastava, Padmanabhan Prasanth and Yashpal Singh. PTI