The last time Rajasthan Royals met Sunrisers Hyderabad at the beginning of the season, it was blown away by a Shikhar Dhawan special. Since then, a lot has changed in IPL-11 and the graphs charted by the two teams facing off here on Sunday could not have been more contrasting.
Halfway through the competition, SRH has climbed its way to the top, finding different heroes in its five wins so far. While the batting has been ordinary, it has found the bowlers to defend meagre targets and the winning momentum after a brief dip where it lost back-to-back games.
On Sunday, under the scorching Jaipur sun, Kane Williamson’s men would be hoping to complete a hat-trick of wins.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar remains the spearhead, but his absence was not felt in the last two games with seamer Siddarth Kaul and leg-spinner Rashid Khan being the pick of the bowlers, supported by Basil Thampi and Shakib Al Hasan.
Siddarth and Rashid have not just picked up wickets, but have been economical too, further choking the opposition.
In fact, it has been SRH’s bowling that has largely kept it in the race. Williamson has been the best batsman on view, but has lacked consistent support at the other end. Having defended even a meagre total against a power-packed Mumbai Indians, the team is high on confidence.
Oscillating fortunes
That confidence is something RR would like to have as well, but the team’s fortunes have been oscillating too much for that. It did win its last game — courtesy a blitzkrieg by K. Gowtham at the end — but the inconsistency has let the team down. Always a team more about the whole than its parts, RR will hope to find more match-winners.
Sanju Samson made a brilliant start to the season but has been quiet for a while now. The big-name foreign players — Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, D’Arcy Short — have failed to fire much and Jofra Archer has played just one game.
RR’s big splurge for the season — Jaydev Unadkat — has taken just three wickets in six games. Amidst all this, captain Ajinkya Rahane has hunkered down and kept his calm but he desperately needs the rest of his team to step up.
A win here will take SRH another step closer to the play-offs, a loss a blip that could be overcome. For RR, the stakes are much higher.
Teams (from):
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shikhar Dhawan, Shakib Al Hasan, Manish Pandey, Carlos Brathwaite, Yusuf Pathan, Wriddhiman Saha, Rashid Khan, Ricky Bhui, Deepak Hooda, Siddarth Kaul, T Natarajan, Mohammad Nabi, Basil Thampi, K Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Sachin Baby, Chris Jordan, Billy Stanlake, Tanmay Agarwal, Shreevats Goswami, Bipul Sharma, Mehdi Hasan, Alex Hale.
Rajasthan Royals: Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Ankit Sharma, Anureet Singh, Jofra Archer, Stuart Binny, Aryaman Birla, Jos Buttler, Dushmantha Chameera, Prashant Chopra, Shreyas Gopal, Krishnappa Gowtham, Heinrich Klaasen, Dhawal Kulkarni, Ben Laughlin, Mahipal Lomror, Sudhesan Midhun, Sanju Samson, Jatin Saxena, D’Arcy Short, Ish Sodhi, Ben Stokes, Rahul Tripathi, Jaydev Unadkat.
Match starts at 4 p.m.
