A confident Sunrisers Hyderabad will look to produce a dominant show against a frail Mumbai Indians outfit and move up in the Indian Premier League points table when the two teams clash in Mumbai on May 6.
Placed fourth in the IPL points table with 12 points in 10 matches with six wins and four losses, SRH will be desperate to produce an all-round show and make improvements especially in their bowling department.
The Pat Cummins-led side is in the midst of an intense battle between multiple teams who are bidding for spots in the final four, with Rajasthan Royals (16 points), Kolkata Knight Riders (14 points) and Lucknow Super Giants (12 points) placed above SRH.
Chennai Super Kings (5th with 10 points) and a resurgent Delhi Capitals (6th with 10 points) are breathing down SRH’s neck, a scenario that would force the 2016 winners to shrug off any rust and get ready for an intense mid-table battle.
If a two-paced pitch at the Wankhede Stadium for the previous clash against KKR was an aberration, the free-flowing SRH batters would look to make merry and pile up a huge score as they have done several times this year.
The pitches here generally are batting-friendly and short boundary lengths at this venue make scores in excess of 200 a norm, but the MI-KKR contest played out on a sluggish surface last Friday challenged the batters to dig deep.
SRH would be high on confidence having pipped the table-toppers RR by just one run in their previous outing, a game in which their bowlers pulled off a thrilling win.
Travis Head (396 runs), Abhishek Sharma (315) and Heinrich Klaasen (337) remain the enforcers in SRH’s batting but South African Aiden Markram would be keen to make a big score of his own, having had a mixed run so far.
Nitish Kumar Reddy (219 runs) has emerged as one of the most promising players for SRH in last few games which takes a significant amount of pressure off the key batters.
T Natarajan’s (15 wickets) accuracy would be handy for SRH as the left-arm pacer is chasing Mumbai Indians’ Jasprit Bumrah (17) for the purple cap.
Five-time winners Mumbai slipped to the bottom of the pool again when Royal Challengers Bengaluru trumped Gujarat Titans on Saturday night.
With only three wins in 11 matches, MI’s challenge is all but over and there is only “pride and name” left to play for by their own admission.
However, all is not lost as MI’s key India players for the upcoming T20 World Cup, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya would remain in focus for their individual form.
Rohit’s all-out aggressive approach has not yielded many big scores whereas the world number 1 T20 batter Suryakumar would be eyeing consistency after a fine half-century against KKR a few nights ago.
India vice-captain Pandya has being consistently on the receiving end due to his ordinary form with both bat and ball and also his on-field decisions as MI skipper.
The all-rounder, however, would be keen to make amends and put an end to the criticism that he has been facing ever since this IPL edition got underway.
Teams (from)
Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (wk), Nehal Wadhera, Luke Wood.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Aiden Markram, Abdul Samad, Nitish Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan, Mayank Markande, Umran Malik, Anmolpreet Singh, Glenn Phillips (wk), Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Upendra Yadav (wk), Jhathavedh Subramanyan, Sanvir Singh, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Akash Maharaj Singh, Mayank Agarwal.
Match starts 7:30pm IST.
