It's time Royal Challengers Bangalore look to shed their over-dependence on the illustrious top-order when they face an upbeat Lucknow Super Giants at the Ekana International Stadium in Lucknow on Monday.

For the Super Giants, a win will help them cement their place in the top four of the standings. Their batting group did a brilliant job in the previous game against Punjab Kings to amass 257.

At present, they would only hope their captain KL Rahul makes a solid contribution but at a healthy strike rate, which has been his worry so far in this IPL.

Another advantage for the Super Giants is that their opponents, RCB, have struggled to maintain momentum provided by Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell, who have done most of the scoring in their eight games so far.

With most teams bunched up closely in the standings, the margin for errors has reduced in the second half of the competition.

Kohli, Du Plessis and Maxwell can’t be expected to do the job in every game and the situation requires the likes of Mahipal Lomror, Shahbaz Ahmed and Dinesh Karthik to step up.

RCB's fielding and catching too need to improve, something which was pointed out by Kohli himself after the loss to Kolkata Knight Riders. The former India captain will continue to lead RCB unless regular skipper Du Plessis, who has been used as an Impact Player lately owing to his rib injury, regains full fitness.

Pacer Mohammed Siraj has been the standout bowler for RCB, but he needs support from the other fast bowlers. Harshal Patel is tasked with bowling the tough overs and he would want to bring down his economy rate down from 9.94.

RCB, in other words, need to be on their toes when it comes to bowling, especially as the likes of Marcus Stoinis and Nicholas Pooran can tear apart any attack on their day.

Today’s match

■ LSG vs RCB, Lucknow, 7.30pm, live on Star Sports & Jio Cinema

Marsh introspects

New Delhi: Delhi Capitals all-rounder Mitchell Marsh has defended his side's Indian batters after they failed to complete the run chase against Sunrisers Hyderabad, saying the game was not lost due to their inexperience and the 198-run target was "far too many" in the end.

In a sensational all-round effort, Marsh scalped four wickets and then struck a breezy 39-ball 63. But once he was dismissed, Delhi imploded with the inexperienced Indian players failing to score the required runs as they lost by nine runs.

"We got a lot of belief in all of our players. There are some inexperienced players in our line-up, but you got to have faith, you got to throw those guys in there and I don't think the game was lost there.

"There were certain areas of our game where we lost the game. That certainly wasn't one of them," Marsh said at the post-match media conference.

"If you look back at our season, we can't blame anyone, but we've lost a couple of really close games. It's extremely hard to win games in IPL. And unfortunately, we've been on the wrong side of a couple of really close ones.

"But there are a few positives coming out of this game. Ultimately, I think chasing 195 was probably far too many on that wicket... I still think that wasn't a 195 wicket so we'll have to assess a few areas of that."

After eight matches, Delhi have just two wins.

PTI