Chennai. When the teams of Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals face each other in the second qualifier here on Friday for a place in the final, it will also be a match between the best power hitters of IPL, Trevid Head and Abhishek Sharma and the clever spin pair of Yuzvendra Chahal and Ravichandran Ashwin. will be.
The pair of Head and Abhishek has taken aggressive batting to a new level and this pair has got the name ‘Trevishek’ from the fans. Head has scored 533 runs in the current season at a strike rate of 199.62 while Abhishek has scored 470 runs at a strike rate of 207.04. Together, they have hit 72 sixes and 96 fours so far. Apart from this, Sunrisers have a great batsman in the form of Heinrich Klaasen (413 runs at a strike rate of 180) who has hit 34 sixes.
Playing at Chepauk will be completely different from Uppal or Kotla or Wankhede because the ball stops here and it is not easy to play big shots as soon as it comes. Royals’ off-spinner Ashwin, who has played most of his cricket at this ground, is well aware of the pitch here and his form has improved in the last phase of the tournament. Royals will hope that along with the country’s best leg-spinner Chahal, he will send Head, Abhishek and Klaasen to the pavilion as quickly as possible so that they can take control of the match.
As far as Sunrisers’ bowling is concerned, the responsibility will once again be on T Natarajan, who has been the team’s highest wicket-taker this season and will want to take advantage of the conditions while playing on his home ground. Apart from this, the experienced pair of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Pat Cummins will also have a lot to do as Bhuvneshwar Kumar has not taken any wicket in the last two matches. Sunrisers’ problem is also the lack of two good spinners in the team. Mayank Markande is not very effective while Shahbaz Ahmed’s main skill is fast batting, not left-arm spin bowling.
Talking about Royals, thanks to their all-round performance against Royal Challengers Bangalore, the team finally ended the wait of five matches to win. The top order has shown some positive signs with the bat, especially Yashasvi Jaiswal and will look to continue this form ahead of the T20 World Cup in the USA next month. However, captain Sanju Samson will have to perform better because he has not even touched the 20-run mark in the last three matches.
Dhruv Jurel will be under pressure in the middle order, who could not even reach double figures in his last two matches. The team will also depend on aggressive West Indies batsmen Shimron Hetmyer and Rovman Powell, who showed power hitting against Bengaluru.
Riyan Parag, who is in great form in the current season, is one of the reliable batsmen of the Royals.
The teams are as follows:
Sunrisers Hyderabad:
Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram, Abdul Samad, Nitish Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan, Mayank Markande, Umran Malik, Anmolpreet Singh, Glenn Phillips, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar , Upendra Yadav, J Subramanian, Sanveer Singh, Vijaykant Vyaskant, Fazalhaq Farooqui, Marco Yenson, Akash Maharaj Singh and Mayank Agarwal.
Rajasthan Royals:
Sanju Samson (captain), Abid Mushtaq, Avesh Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Donovan Ferreira, Kuldeep Sen, Kunal Singh Rathore, Nandre Burger, Navdeep Saini, Ravichandran Ashwin, Riyan Parag, Sandeep Sharma, Shimron Hetmyer, Shubham Dubey, Rovman Powell, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Trent Boult, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Yuzvendra Chahal and Tanush Kotian.
Time: The match will start at 7.30 pm.