Hyderabad: The race to the Playoffs is getting tight, and teams are up for the big fight. It would be no different when Sunrisers Hyderabad host Kings XI Punjab in their last home game, hoping for one last hurrah to make a strong push to qualify for the next stage of the tournament and come back here for the summit clash scheduled on May 12.
It’s quite a rocky road to make that turnaround though, with teams jostling for a spot in the all-important top four.
On Monday, the Orange outfit will need to turn out in the pink of health as they take on Ravichandran Ashwin’s aggressive bunch at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium. First, they need to sort out disorder in the middle-order. That the Sunrisers are heavily dependent on the top has only been too evident. In Saturday’s game against Rajasthan Royals, they slipped from a strong 103 for 1 to 147 for 8! Opener David Warner (37) and No.3 Manish Pandey (61) were the only ones with notable scores.
And it does not help that consistent opener Jonny Bairstow has left to join the English squad in preparation for the upcoming World Cup. Captain Kane Williamson admitted the team was missing him. “Jonny was on top of the order and had a fantastic campaign whilst he was here,” he said.
However, Williamson, Vijay Shankar, Shakib Al Hasan, Deepak Hooda have come a cropper and will need to pull their socks up big time for it’s only going to get tougher from here. “It’s important to build small partnerships and gain momentum going forward into the big games but we have the confidence to win them. We know we can be better,” Williamson says.
On the bowling front, though the economy rates have been decent, penetration is what the Sunrisers attack appears to lack. Seamers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Khaleel Ahmed have come up with modest performances and mystery spinner Rashid Khan seems to have lost his mojo when it comes to picking wickets.
They will have a tough ask against a strong batting line-up that has the likes of Chris Gayle, K. L. Rahul, David Miller, Nicholas Pooran and Mayank Agarwal.
Gayle and Rahul rank in the top bracket of run-getters and Pooran has announced himself with a bang against Bangalore when he crashed 46 that contained five sixes.
The tweaking Ashwins — Ravichandran and Murugan — will form the spin strikeforce for Kings while Mohammad Shami and Ankit Rajpoot handle the new ball.
This season, Punjab has defeated Hyderabad by six wickets at home 20 days ago, but both teams go into Monday’s match with two straight losses in away games, desperate for a win.
