(Cricket news) If Hyderabad lose to Chennai then they will officially be out of the playoff reckoning and on the other hand CSK is one win away from confirming their place in the playoffs. It has been a very disappointing season for SRH as their franchise isn’t really used to mediocrity, they have made the playoffs every time since 2016. CSK have greater ambitions this season and would want to finish on top of the table, on paper its a David vs Goliath battle and SRH will be hoping to crash CSK’s party.

SRH players were elated with joy when they won their last match but more than joy it was a sense of relief for the SRH camp to finally win. The management would be hoping for a repeat of Jason Roy’s performance as the middle order is too fragile and very inexperienced. Captain Kane Williamson also needs to lead by example as he averages 46.2 against CSK. SRH will still be without Natarajan as he continues to be sidelined with COVID-19, a lot of onus will be on Bhuvneshwar Kumar to get back his full fitness before the World T20 also. Rashid can be the key for SRH as the Sharjah pitches have offered a lot of turn which in turn help pick up wickets.

CSK will be hoping that Deepak Chahar will break his duck of going wicketless in five out of the six games, he too will get assistance from the pitch as he bowls a lot of slower bowls and cross seam deliveries. Ruturaj and Faf du Plessis will again be the key to give them a good start, the powerplay at this venue needs to be utilised properly as batting tends to be difficult with the old ball. Only concern going into the match is MS Dhoni does have a strike rate of less than 100 against Rashid Khan so the skipper needs to rotate the strike constantly if they face off.

Head to head: SRH 4 – 11 CSK, the last time they faced each other CSK won comfortably by 7 wickets as Ruturaj Gaikwad made 75(44).

Pitch and Weather report: The Sharjah Cricket Stadium has completely surprised the teams this season as the new pitches are slow and difficult to score runs, not much is going to change in terms of the pitch as spinners will be key in this contest. The temperature is gonna be around 30 degrees and with no chances of rain.

Interesting facts:

• SRH have only picked up 7 wickets in the powerplay which is the fewest this season
• CSK have lost only 10 wickets inside the powerplay which is the joint fewest in this years IPL
• Rashid averages 27.6 runs against CSK which his worst out of all IPL teams
• Last season the average 1st innings total at Sharjah was 176 but this season it has been only 136
• Jadeja has won the most Man of the match trophies since joining CSK in 2012

Also read: As No 3, my job is to provide good base for finishers like AB and Maxwell: Bharat

Probable XI for SRH:

1 Jason Roy, 2 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Priyam Garg, 5 Abhishek Sharma, 6 Jason Holder, 7 Abdul Samad, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Siddharth Kaul, 11 Sandeep Sharma

Probable XI for CSK:

1 Faf du Plessis, 2 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 3 Moeen Ali, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 Suresh Raina, 6 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Sam Curran/Dwayne Bravo, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Deepak Chahar, 11 Josh Hazlewood/Imran Tahir