OVERVIEW:
Both these teams have played 5 games and have won 3 of them but because of their superior NRR the Punjab Kings are ahead of the Sun Risers in the points table.
PUNJAB KINGS: So far, their journey in this season has been a mixed one as they won one and lost the next. After a heartbreak against the Titans, both Punjab and Odean Smith have redeemed themselves by defeating Mumbai in their next game. They seemed to have adopted a strategy where they’re letting all their batters go all guns blazing right from their first ball which actually won them a couple of games but also backfired against the Knight Riders. Their batting looks really good where all of them are looking in fine touch including their openers who seem to have found their form in their last game. Their death bowling is a slight issue for them as there is no real support for Arshdeep considering that Odean Smith is not a death specialist with the ball.
SUNRISERS HYDERABAD: After a slow start to their campaign, the orange army have now defeated both the last year finalists and the unbeaten newcomer Titans in a row. Because of their hat-trick of victories, now they’re tied with the other 5 teams at 6 points. Their bowling is their strongest department as always and they’ll be glad to see the comeback of Natarajan whose nailing yorkers at will. The young Umran Malik is improving and learning a lot from each and every game and Williamson is not afraid to give him the ball during the power play. In their batting, both Pooran and Markram finally found their IPL form back. They definitely have to rethink about their opening combination. Yes, some might argue that Williamson will steady their innings in case there’s a collapse but Rahul Tripathi who’s looking untouchable now had his best days while opening for his respective franchises.
PROBABLE PLAYING XI:
KINGS: M Agarwal (c), S Dhawan, J Bairstow, L Livingstone, J Sharma (wk), M Sharukh Khan, O Smith, K Rabada, R Chahar, V Arora, A Singh.
SUNRISERS: K Williamson (c), A Sharma, R Tripathi, A Markram, N Pooran (wk), S Singh, J Suchith, M Jansen, B Kumar, T Natarajan, U Malik.
PITCH REPORT: The DY Patil Stadium has given us both high scoring and low scoring thrillers in this tournament. It's because they use two different pitches for different games. Out of the 9 games played here so far, 5 of them has been won by the chasing team and 4 by the defending team. The average score combining both the innings is 170. The teams have continued to prefer fielding first irrespective of the previous results.
FACTS / MILESTONES:
- Head-to-Head: SRH – 12, PBKS - 5
- SRH have won all their five tosses so far and have decided to chase on all occasions.
- Dhawan needs 19 more runs to reach 6000 IPL runs and become only the second player to do it after Virat Kohli.
- Bhuvaneshwar Kumar needs just 3 more wickets to reach 150 IPL wickets.
- Bairstow and Pooran need 4 and 2 sixes respectively to reach 50 IPL sixes.
DREAM11 TEAM:
