Cricket, at its most basic, is a contest between bat and ball. When Delhi Daredevils takes on Sunrisers Hyderabad at home on Friday, it will be even more so.
The Pepsi Indian Premier League, however, has often blurred the lines between the practitioners of the two arts. The host will be desperate to get its batting in place, against a bowling that has been impressive so far.
DD is desperate to get its first win in the tournament. Admittedly, there is a long way to go in the two-month long competition, but after three straight losses, a win will be welcome in the Daredevils dressing room.
Batting woes
For a team that boasts of one of the strongest batting line-ups in the IPL, DD has not really fired the charts. Except for David Warner, who has waged a lonely battle, no other batsman has struck form.
The team would do well with a substantial contribution at the top from Unmukt Chand. DD has the option of replacing Unmukt with Irfan Pathan up the order. On the other hand, SH has not exactly set the stage on fire either in terms of batting. However, its bowling has more than made up for the lack of runs. With Dale Steyn and Ishant Sharma working well together and Amit Mishra tightening the screws in the middle overs, SH has managed to defend low totals twice over (including in the Super Over against RCB).
Familiar trend
Ironically, the one game in which its batsmen managed to go past 150 (again against RCB), the bowlers failed to back them up, even though it was a Virat Kohli blitzkrieg that took the game away from SH.
Cameron White has made it clear that the SH batsmen need to get more on the board to assist their bowlers and Ferozeshah Kotla would be a good place to start.
More so since, besides Umesh Yadav and to some extent Shahbaz Nadeem, the DD bowling hasn’t exactly steamrollered the opposition either.
Either way, the bowlers are likely to be in charge once again, as has been the trend thus far in this edition of the IPL.
