Defending champions Chennai Super Kings will be looking to get back to winning ways when they take on Pune Warriors in the Indian Premier League encounter at home on Monday.
Chennai have won just two of their five games and are on a two match losing streak
Pune too have lost their last two games having won the first two and a win on Monday will take them in the upper half of the 10-team table.
Chennai have struggled with batting at the top of the order, failing to get partnerships going in most matches.
Though they have five batsmen with more than 100 runs under their belt, the senior batsmen have not come good when needed.
The bigger worry, however, for Chennai will be the form of their bowlers. Skipper MS Dhoni has a star-studded bowling line-up with Doug Bollinger, Tim Southee, Albie Morkel, Suran Randiv and R Ashwin to choose from, but none of them have performed as expected.
Bollinger has been the best of the lot conceding less than seven runs an over in the two games he has played and R Ashwin has gone for just a touch over seven, but the other bowlers have all conceded eight or more an over.
Pune will be looking to target bowlers like Morkel, Southee and the part-timers like Suresh Raina and Dhoni will have to use his bowlers smartly against a good batting line-up consisting of skipper Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Jesse Ryder to name a few.
Chennai, on the other hand, will be looking at the Pune bowling and backing the batsmen to get big runs, either batting first or second.
Alfonso Thomas has bowled decently well and Wayne Parnell has also been impressive but they have not been as effective as bowlers from other teams and apart from Murali Kartik, the team does not have any experienced spinner to fall back on.
Yuvraj Singh has been among the wickets since the ICC World Cup but with three India players in the Chennai batting line-up, he may not be as effective on Monday.
The game will be crucial for both teams, but especially for Chennai who have played a game more than Pune.
A loss in this game would severely hurt their chances of making the knock-outs. But Chennai has been in this situation before; they qualified for the knock-outs last season after a thrilling win of the final league game and went on to won the title.
So, the team has the experience and they have a successful leader in Dhoni. Their turnaround could well begin with a win over Pune.
IPL - 4