(Cricket news) Chennai Super Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad have had terrible starts to the season but will look to rejuvenate their season with an important victory. The panic button has not yet been pressed, but for both CSK and SRH, that point may not be far away. Both the captains are a bit under pressure to perform as this year the margin of error is very less especially with 10 teams.
For CSK, nothing has gone their way this year, the defending champions are missing Deepak Chahar who is likely to make his comeback somewhere near 25th April. Super Kings have had a 0-3 start to IPL 2022, with key players from the IPL 2021 not yet firing, missing the dominant top-order runs Ruturaj Gaikwad has not had the ideal start to the season but he did started off IPL 2021 in similar fashion and ended up with the Orange Cap. Robin Uthappa v Washington Sundar in the PowerPlay has all the makings of an intriguing tussle as the swashbuckling opener will look to roll back the years and reproduce the kind of start he got in the tournament when he played for KKR. For the CSK fans one thing to cheer is the form of MS Dhoni and Shivam Dube who have found some form with the bat.
For SRH, nothing has clicked this season, as they might just have bigger problems than their opponents. Openers Abhishek Sharma and Kane Williamson have the poorest combined strike rate (76) among all teams in the powerplay yet and both haven’t survived the full powerplay as well. Rahul Tripathi in recent years has been most successful in the IPL as an opener and Aiden Markram has an T20 average of 57 from No. 3. Williamson on the other hand is batting as the opener but his best IPL numbers are from No. 4. The SRH management will look to shuffle the batting order in order to achieve the best result. Their economy rates for the last seven overs from overs 15 (9.6) and 16 to 20 (11.7) are among the poorest of all the teams, with Umran Malik, Washington Sundar and Romario Shepherd all proving expensive.
Pitch and weather report: The last afternoon game at the DY Patil stadium saw Jos Buttler score a big hundred as winning the toss won’t be very important, since dew won’t play part in the afternoon game. The one thing that can affect the players is the heat and humidity as the temperature is going to hover around 34 degrees with no possibility of rain.
Interesting facts:
- It is going to be Jadeja's 150th T20 match for the Super Kings. Only Suresh Raina (200) and Dhoni (217*) have played more matches
- Dhoni has a strike rate of 195 (his best among all teams) against them and has hammered Bhuvneshwar for 97 runs in 49 balls with zero dismissals
- Williamson has struggled against Super Kings, averaging 26.50 in five innings
- But Kane Williamson has scored 338 runs in 10 innings against CSK at a strike rate of 142.62
- Ambati Rayudu has been a menace against SRH, scoring 513 runs in 16 innings at 132.22, including an unbeaten century
Also read: Gill, Tewatia star in Gujarat Titans' dramatic 6-wicket win over Punjab Kings
Probable XI for CSK:
1 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 2 Robin Uthappa, 3 Moeen Ali, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 Ravindra Jadeja (capt), 6 Shivam Dube, 7 MS Dhoni (wk), 8 Dwayne Bravo, 9 Dwaine Pretorius, 10 Chris Jordan, 11 Tushar Deshpande
Probable XI for SRH:
1 Rahul Tripathi, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Aiden Markram, 5 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 6 Washington Sundar, 7 Abdul Samad, 8 Romario Shepherd, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Shreyas Gopal, 11 T Natarajan
