A buoyant Pune Warriors India will take on the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 22nd match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium in Pune on Wednesday.
While the Pune outfit will be confident with their thumping 24-run win over the two-time champions Chennai Super Kings, the Sunrisers Hyderabad would aim to make amends on many fronts after their 48-run loss against the defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders in their previous encounter.
Pune Warriors India proved with their performance against Chennai that they are a force to reckon with in the tournament and despite their chequered performance and the absence of big names at times; they can surprise even the best.
Despite the absence of the regular skipper Angelo Mathews and star all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, Pune trumped MS Dhoni-led Chennai in a convincing manner.
Aaron Finch’s form at the top of the order and the all-round impressive show of the young Steven Smith has indeed raised hopes of good show in the games to come.
Against the Super Kings, Warriors produced an all-round show and all they would aim for is consistency. The bowlers were impressive and were equally backed by the effort of the fielders, especially Smith, who took three catches.
However, there are still a few concerns for the Warriors. While Finch was ripping apart the Chennai bowling attack with strokes all over the park, his partner, Robin Uthappa was too slow to start with. After Finch was dismissed, Pune struggled to keep up the momentum and it was only due to the quickfire knock by Smith towards the end, they managed to post a daunting total.
T Suman gave a reprieve to Murali Vijay, which would have left Chennai reeling at 2/2. Had the Chennai opener flourished after that, Pune would have had to face some embarrassment.
Many would wonder why Smith was not played in the previous games – the Australian all-rounder was terrific on Monday. His rapid knock of 39 not out from 16 balls gave Pune the much-needed lift, as they had almost squandered a rollicking opening start given by Finch and Uthappa.
Indian seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar had a memorable outing, and he would hope to have a repeat of the show against Chennai. The stand-in skipper, Ross Taylor, did well to give Bhuvneshwar three overs at a stretch which proved decisive.
If Pune did many things right against Chennai, Sunrisers were hapless in their previous outing. After Kolkata pushed their first innings total to 180-4, there wasn’t much fight from the Sunrisers batsmen and they lost the tie by a big margin.
The likes of Dale Steyn, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra and Thisara Perera failed to trouble the Kolkata batsmen, and they will hope that it was only a one-off event.
A languid performance with the bat hurt Sunrisers’ confidence in tie against Kolkata. Skipper Kumar Sangakkara has failed to contribute with the bat and it remains to be a worry for the newly-inducted side in the IPL.
Hyderabad’s foreign recruits Perera and Cameron White are key players, and the management will expect more from Sangakkara with the bat.
However, the Hyderabad-based franchise can draw inspiration from their win over Pune Warriors in the third game of this season, and they would like to maintain their supremacy.
Teams:
Pune Warriors India (Probable): Aaron Finch, Robin Uthappa (wk), Manish Pandey, Ross Taylor (c), Abhishek Nayar, Tirumalsetti Suman, Mitchell Marsh, Steven Smith, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rahul Sharma, Ashok Dinda.
Sunrisers Hyderabad (Probable): Dwaraka Ravi Teja, Parthiv Patel (wk), Kumar Sangakkara (c), Hanuma Vihari, Cameron White, Thisara Perera, Ashish Reddy, Karan Sharma, Amit Mishra, Dale Steyn, Ishant Sharma.
