Sunrisers Hyderabad Vs Gujarat Giants, IPL league match will take place at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium here on Apr 6
Hyderabad: For a team that suffered three consecutive losses after winning the first of the four games it played, former champions Sunrisers Hyderabad should feel the heat and make serious amends in all departments when it takes on the confident Shubman Gill-led Gujarat Titans in the IPL league match at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium here on Sunday.
At the start of the season, the talk was all about the explosive batting line-up of SRH, what with the likes of openers Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan (who scored a century in the first match), followed by Nitish Kumar Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen, and Aniket Verma.
But it was pretty obvious that this formidable line-up proved to be brittle and vulnerable in the face of accurate, if not hostile, bowling. It is not that the SRH batters failed on unplayable tracks, but on pretty decent tracks too, like the one at Vizag and Kolkata.
It is time for the SRH batters to quickly realise that runs don’t come only through slam-bang hitting from the word go. Emphasis can be on stroke selection. It is not that the SRH batters are so naive to ignore this, but it is definitely critical for them to change the script, for another defeat here would seriously dent its campaign to stay in the hunt.
Even in bowling, there are grey areas of concern and especially on expected batting track here, SRH might not afford to rely on spin. The pacers have to be spot on and provide the early breakthroughs, and left-arm pacer Jaydev Unadkat might be a better option given his variations.
On the other hand, Gujarat Titans with two wins from three games, should be pleased with the way opener Sai Sudharsan has been scoring so consistently in the company of Gill. Then, they have the likes of Jos Buttler, Sherfane Rutherford, Shahrukh Khan, and Rahul Tewatia in batting.
In bowling, local hero Mohd Siraj should be more than willing to have a go in front of a ‘home crowd’ in the company of Arshad Khan, Prasidh Krishna and Ishant Sharma. The spin duo of left-armer Sai Kishore and the experienced leggie Rashid Khan hold the key. By all means, it might be another batting feast – but from which side? Only time will tell.
