Rajasthan Royals (RR) captain Steve Smith feels inconsistent showing from his team's experienced cricketers is one big factor why they stand in the bottom half of the IPL 2020 points table, with the exception of ace quick Jofra Archer. 

Archer has been on song throughout his team's campaign but the same isn't true for the likes of Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Smith himself. The skipper thinks they've been leaving Archer too much ground to cover alone and hence, languish at seventh with only four wins in eleven outings to show for their efforts. 

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"Yes, you want your star players or your more experienced players to be consistent. Jofra has been outstanding and the rest of us haven't been able to put performances on the board consistently and that hurts obviously," Smith told ANI. 

"It isn't through lack of effort as the guys have been trying real hard. It hasn't been easy to play on a couple of tough wickets, but that is no excuse."

"There have been moments here and there, but we haven't had moments where two of us have had a good game together or something like that. That has been difficult and you need those partnerships in the middle," he added. 

On his own performances with the bat, Smith, who averages only 26.50 after 11 innings, admitted it has taken him time to find his rhythm. 

"I do think it has taken me a little while to find a bit of rhythm and I think after the RCB game where I was able to spend some time in the middle, just started to find a bit of rhythm there and actually feel quite good in the middle now. Obviously, had it come a little bit earlier, perhaps early in the season I was probably going a little bit too hard as well."

"After the first two games in Sharjah where I scored some runs going quite hard I probably could have pulled things back a bit from there and tried to play a few more cricket shots. Found some nice rhythm now and hopefully can have some big impact in the last few games."

Yet, it's not all doom and gloom for RR, who have had at least three positives in spin bowling all-rounder Rahul Tewatia, their saviour in two of the four wins, young pacer Kartik Tyagi and middle-order power-hitter Riyan Parag. 

"Yeah, Tewatia, Parag, Kartik Tyagi are definitely three positives for us this year. They have turned up some good performances and it is probably unfortunate that our big players haven't been able to perform as consistently as we would have liked. It has been a bit of an up and down year after such a good start," said Smith. 

"A few losses in a row and since then we haven't been able to string two wins in a row. It has been a difficult season but still hopeful we can turn things and win the last three and give ourselves every chance to make the playoffs."

The disappointing form of the first-choice overseas arsenal has raised voices in favour of David Miller's inclusion. The explosive South African left-hander has been warming the benches since playing one match earlier in the tournament. 

Smith justified the situation saying, "Yeah, look that's the tough thing about IPL. You can only play four foreign players, so there's always people around the IPL talking about players in the IPL that aren't playing and think that they should be playing or could be playing. It's a tough one to manage for sure but again that's part and parcel of the IPL."

"It takes squad mentality with guys that aren't playing helping guys that are playing, making sure that they're training hard, and still preparing and ready when the opportunity comes. That's just part and parcel of the IPL unfortunately," he signed off.