IPL 2021, Preview: Bottom-Placed Teams SRH And Punjab Kings Clash

Cricket Image for IPL 2021, Preview: Bottom-Placed Teams SRH And Punjab Kings Clash (Image Source: Google)

Two bottom-placed teams, SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Punjab Kings (PBKS), will battle it out in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match here at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Tuesday.

While SRH are lying at the bottom of the table and are yet to win a game, PBKS have managed just one win out of their games and have the worst net run rate (-0.967) among the teams.

All eyes will be on SRH, who had made the play-offs last year but are struggling to come to terms with the slow nature of the pitch at Chepauk.

The David Warner-led side ended up losing all the three matches from positions of strength. They will be aware that their opponents have the more difficult job of adapting as PBKS have played all their matches thus far in Mumbai.

SRH will also look to strengthen their middle order, which has been letting them down for the past two matches, and it will be interesting to see if they feature Kane Williamson in the match. The New Zealand captain is recovering from injury.

PBKS's Mayank Agarwal came back to form in the previous match against Delhi Capitals, but skipper KL Rahul took some time to get his 61 (51 balls). PBKS will hope that their talismanic batsman Chris Gayle comes into form after failing in the last couple of matches. Fellow West Indian batsman Nicholas Pooran too hasn't got going though to be fair to him he came into bat towards the end of the innings and got very few balls to face.

Young Shahrukh Khan has impressed for PBKS though with big hits at the end.

Squads

SunRisers Hyderabad: David Warner (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Basil Thampi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jonny Bairstow (wicketkeeper), Kane Williamson, Manish Pandey, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Sandeep Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Shreevats Goswami, Siddharth Kaul, Khaleel Ahmed, T Natarajan, Vijay Shankar, Wriddhiman Saha (wicketkeeper), Abdul Samad, Jason Roy, Jason Holder, Priyam Garg, Virat Singh, Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb ur Rehman, J Suchith.

Punjab Kings: KL Rahul (captain/wicketkeeper), Mayank Agarwal, Chris Gayle, Mandeep Singh, Prabsimran Singh, Nicholas Pooran (wicketkeeper), Sarfaraz Khan, Deepak Hooda, Murugan Ashwin, Ravi Bishnoi, Harpreet Brar, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Ishan Porel, Darshan Nalkande, Chris Jordan, Dawid Malan, Jhye Richardson, Shahrukh Khan, Riley Meredith, Moises Henriques, Jalaj Saxena, Utkarsh Singh, Fabian Allen , Saurabh Kumar