Sunrisers Hyderabad return home to play a game against the in-form Kings XI Punjab and no one will forget the reverse fixture between these two teams at Mohali. They played exactly a week back and that’s when Sunrisers’ woes began. They lost that game and lost the one after that as well, and then just got back on track with a win in Mumbai.
You’re looking at the best bowling attack (SRH) playing a batting line up which consists of an in-form Chris Gayle, to go with an in-form KL Rahul, Karun Nair and Mayank Agarwal. Get past these four and you’re up against the weak links and out of form Yuvraj Singh and Aaron Finch. The last time they played, Punjab smashed 193 and won the game by 15 runs. Can they repeat the feat away from home?
Teams
This game is going to be extremely hard on the Sunrisers Hyderabad. They played back-to-back games when they played Mumbai Indians, caught a flight to Hyderabad and after another one-day’s break, they are set to play again. That’s basically 3 games in 5 days and that cannot be easy on any team, to be honest. To add to that, they have injury woes with Shikhar Dhawan taking another blow in the last game, and Billy Stanlake being ruled out of IPL 2018 with a finger injury.
Now Punjab have 5 consecutive wins and not many times in the history of the Indian Premier League have teams won 6 consecutive matches. They came very close to losing in the last game but still managed to get over the line. Let’s not forget that Punjab have a week off after this game so they will want to go into their small break on a high.
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They played the last game without the mighty Chris Gayle and still won, but he is expected to fit right back in to the opening slot, and Ashwin will have to decide to drop one between Finch and Miller. Going on form in IPL 2018, I would drop Finch. He has scores of 0, 0, 14* and 2 so far this season. They brought in Ankit Rajpoot for Mohit Sharma; will this become a permanent change? Rajpoot is raw bounce and pace as compared to Mohit’s change ups, that have been taken for a lot of runs this season. Rajpoot also won the MOM award in their last game.
Overall
The bowlers aren’t going to save you in every game and defend 118 each time. SRH batsmen, please step up. One bad day for the Hyderabad bowlers and they’re almost always going to lose. I’m going to back Kings XI Punjab to win and consolidate their position at the top of the IPL 2018 points table. I will back SRH if two changes are made – Hales in for Nabi; Shreevats Goswami in for Saha.
