The Sunrisers Hyderabad couldn’t have asked for a worse start to the season as they slumped to three straight defeats, and in all occasions while chasing.
Two bottom-placed teams, SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Punjab Kings (PBKS), will face-off in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match here at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Wednesday.
Bruised and battered after suffering a hat-trick of defeats, a desperate Sunrisers Hyderabad would seek inspiration from skipper David Warner to arrest any further slide when they take on Punjab Kings in an IPL match on Wednesday.
While SRH are lying at the bottom of the table and are yet to win a game, PBKS have managed just one win out of their games and have the worst net run rate (-0.967) among the teams.
All eyes will be on SRH, who had made the play-offs last year, but are struggling to come to terms with the slow nature of the pitch at Chepauk.
The David Warner-led side ended up losing all the three matches from positions of strength. They will be aware that their opponents have the more difficult job of adapting as PBKS have played all their matches thus far in Mumbai.
SRH will also look to strengthen their middle order, which has been letting them down for the past two matches, and it will be interesting to see if they feature Kane Williamson in the match. The New Zealand captain is recovering from injury.
He also needs some serious introspection before deciding his playing XI on Wednesday.
Warner and Rashid Khan are certainties in the foreign players’ slots, but the absence of Kane Williamson has been badly felt as he can provide solidity to the middle-order, especially after they faltered in three consecutive chases.
Going by Wridhhiman Saha’s poor form, Jonny Bairstow is the frontrunner for the wicket-keeper’s position.
But what would be troubling Warner most is the lack of depth in the team’s local batting resources.
It’s high time the likes of Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma and Abdul Samad pulled up their socks as the likes of seasoned Kedar Jadhav and Priyam Garg are waiting in the wings for their opportunities.
SRH have also been hit hard by the poor show of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan.
Natarajan was replaced by Khaleel Ahmed in their last match and the latter did a good job to restrict Mumbai. But Bhuvneshwar continues to be on the expensive side.
Rashid has been economical but didn’t look menacing so far.
PBKS’s Mayank Agarwal came back to form in the previous match against Delhi Capitals, but skipper KL Rahul took some time to get his 61 (51 balls). PBKS will hope that their talismanic batsman Chris Gayle comes into form after failing in the last couple of matches. Fellow West Indian batsman Nicholas Pooran too hasn’t got going though to be fair to him he came into bat towards the end of the innings and got very few balls to face.
Young Shahrukh Khan has impressed for PBKS though with big hits at the end. #KhabarLive #hydnews
