Royal Challengers Bangalore v Mumbai Indians, IPL at Port Elizabeth

Port Elizabeth: Aware that another defeat will bring their semi-final hopes crashing down, a desperate Mumbai Indians would settle for nothing less than victory in a crucial Indian Premier League match against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Sunday.

While Mumbai Indians will be in search of an elusive win, the Royal Challengers will be eyeing a return to winning ways and move to the top half of the table.

With just three wins out of nine matches, the Sachin Tendulkar-led Mumbai Indians are second from bottom in the eight-team event and would be eyeing revenge against the Royal Challengers, who humiliated them by 9 wickets in their earlier encounter.

The morale of the Mumbai outfit is at its lowest after losing three consecutive matches and from here on it would be a Herculean task for Tendulkar's boys to pick themselves up and set things right.

What has been a matter of concern for Mumbai is the batsmen's inability to put up decent totals on the board.

Boasting the likes of Sanath Jayasuriya, Tendulkar, JP Duminy and Dwayne Bravo, Mumbai would be eyeing a big score tomorrow but for that to happen, they will have to do away with their middle over blues.

Mumbai Indians bowling, however, looked impressive in all the outings so far.

Royal Challengers Bangalore, the batting has lifted in the last few games, but they're still prone to collapsing - as they showed against Rajasthan - thus putting far too pressure on the bowlers.

Match facts
Sunday May 10, 2009
Start time 12.30pm, 10.30GMT, 04:00pm IST

Stats and trivia

• In his last five innings Tendulkar has scored 63 runs. In his first three innings he scored 163.
• In his last three games, Malinga has conceded 78 runs from 67 balls and taken two wickets. In the first five, he conceded 80 runs from 110 balls and took 11 wickets.
• Bangalore have taken 21 wickets during the middle overs (from seven to 14), conceding 23.52 runs per wicket. Mumbai have taken 14 wickets at 30.85 during this period.