Thursday’s IPL clash will feature teams that sit on the extreme ends of the points table. Table-topper Chennai Super Kings takes on the bottom-placed Sunrisers Hyderabad .
CSK has form on its side. And would like to maintain its winning momentum going into the playoff stage.
Sequence broken
SRH, which finally managed to break the sequence of defeats by overcoming Rajasthan Royals, will want to put the missing pieces together even if it is rather late in the day.
CSK’s opening pair of the fleet-footed Ruturaj Gaikwad and the innovative Faf du Plessis have provided blazing starts, built solid platforms.
Moeen Ali is a free-stroking batter at No. 3 and both Ambati Rayudu and southpaw Suresh Raina can sizzle in the middle-order.
Then you have left-arm spinning all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, who not only contains and strikes, but can swing games with the willow too.
CSK, though, will be seeking runs from skipper M.S. Dhoni who appears out of touch since he plays virtually no cricket outside of IPL.
And left-arm seaming all-rounder Sam Curran is leaking runs. The sooner the canny Dwayne Bravo, recovering from niggles, returns, the better it will be for CSK.
Roy impressive
For Sunrisers, aggressive opener Jason Roy, replacing out-of-form David Warner , impressed against RR and paceman Siddharth Kaul bowled with verve at the death.
The contest will be a match-up between two wily captains, Dhoni and Kane Williamson. And Sunrisers’ gifted leg-spinner Rashid Khan might have an influential role to play.
Teams (from):
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (C), David Warner, Manish Pandey, Sherfane Rutherford, Wriddhiman Saha, Shreevats Goswami, Rashid Khan, Vijay Shankar, Mohammad Nabi, Abhishek Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Siddharth Kaul, Khaleel Ahmed, Urman Malik, Basil Thampi, Sandeep Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Abdul Samad, J Suchith, Jason Holder, Virat Singh, Priyam Garg, Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, Jason Roy.
Chennai Super Kings: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (C), Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, KM Asif, Deepak Chahar, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Imran Tahir, N Jagadeesan, Karn Sharma, Lungi Ngidi, Mitchell Santner, Ravindra Jadeja, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shardul Thakur, Sam Curran, R Sai Kishore, Moeen Ali, K Gowtham, Cheteshwar Pujara, Harishankar Reddy, Bhagath Varma, C Hari Nishaanth.
Match starts: 7.30pm IST on Thursday.
