If Rajasthan Royals (RR) win today’s encounter against the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), they will edge past Kolkata and occupy the fourth place in the points table, owing to a better net-run-rate.
The Royals walk into this game on the back of a convincing victory against the Chennai Super Kings, owing to a brilliant bowling performance and a wonderful innings of 70 of 48 balls by Jos Buttler. Whereas for Sunrisers Hyderabad, they lost their last 3 encounters, with one of the defeats being against their opponents today. In their last encounter, they lost in a super over. They might have been on equal footing in the match itself, but their batters had no answers to Lockie Ferguson’s bowling, as he dismissed 2 batters in 3 balls, giving just 2 runs in the process.
Things didn’t go well for SRH the last time they faced RR either. Their batters failed to attack as they managed just 158 after batting first. And in-spite of getting RR’s seasoned campaigners early, they could not overcome the hurdle of Priyam Garg and Rahul Tewatia, the later of whom even attacked Rashid at a time. Tewatia took the charge to SRH’s premier bowlers as he hit him for 3 consecutive boundaries in the 18th over. This is something that has rarely happened to the leggie over the course of his career. Rashid would be waiting for this encounter, waiting for payback.
Both the teams have been able to find good balance at last, but there are a few things they would keep an eye out for. Rajasthan would hope for a good innings under Sanju Samson’s belt as we move towards the business end of the tournament. SRH on the other, would keep an eye at the skipper’s strike rate.
Rajasthan are unlikely to tinker with the winning combination. For SRH, Williamson is likely to sit out because of the hamstring injury he had issues with in the last game. Mohammad Nabi and Jason Holder are the available replacements and it remains to be seen if SRH opt for an extra pacer owing to the conditions or an experienced spinner to partner Rashid in the middle overs and choke the opposition.
Likely 11s:
RR: Robin Uthappa, Ben Stokes, Sanju Samson (wk), Steven Smith (c), Jos Buttler, Riyan Parag, Rahul Tewatia, Jofra Archer, Shreyas Gopal, Ankit Rajpoot, Kartik Tyagi
SRH: David Warner (c), Jonny Bairstow (wk), Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson/Mohammad Nabi, Priyam Garg, Vijay Shankar, Abdul Samad, Rashid Khan, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan, Basil Thampi
