Since they headlined the 2016 IPL final four years ago, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore have followed contrasting paths. Champions that season, SRH has made the playoffs all three seasons, in one of which the team finished runner-up. Meanwhile, RCB’s fortunes have gone south, twice bagging the wooden spoon (in 2017 and 2019) and once finishing sixth on the points table.
This year, even before RCB underwent its first training session, memes started flooding the internet with Kohli’s team on the receiving end. But as a new season approaches, Kohli has a chance to shut down all of her trolls, simply on the basis of the means she owns this year. At Aaron Finch and Chris Morris, RCB has managed to secure a couple of wonderful buys at the IPL auction last December and these two, along with promising youngsters from T20, surely seem eager to put an end to the grind he’s in for. equipment.
The Sunrisers have managed to fly under the radar, which promises to bode well for the team. Their captain David Warner has led from the front, winning the Orange Cap twice in the previous three seasons; he has finished as the top scorer in three editions of IPL. The year he didn’t, it was his teammate Kane Williamson who scored 735 mammoth runs. Sunrises are a side whose players don’t just shoot on paper.
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Team news
Hyderabad Sunrises: The Sunrisers will return with their most successful starting pair of all time. Jonny Bairstow and David Warner burned the charts last season with the Australian starter racking up 692 runs at an average of 69.2 and a strike rate of 143.86 before returning home. Bairstow, in his first IPL, scored 445 runs in 10 innings and with Warner put up a record partnership of 185 runs for the opening wicket. The middle order seems much more composed in the presence of Williamson, Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar, and Wriddhiman Saha. Rashid Khan and Shahbaz Nadeem are expected to get one set, while Bhuvneshar Kumar, Siddharth Kaul and Sandeep Sharma are likely to be the three pacemakers.
Probable XI: 1 David Warner (Captain), 2 Jonny Bairstow, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Vijay Shankar, 6 Wriddhiman Saha, 7 Rashid Khan, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Siddharth Kaul, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 Shahbaz Nadeem
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Aaron Finch and Parthiv Patel will likely lead the batting, followed by the imperious duo of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers at Nos. 3 and 4. Devdutt Padikkal is a likely starter with Chris Morris playing the runner-up role. Washington Sundar and Yuzvendra Chahal will take care of the spinning department, while Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj and Dale Steyn will take over the responsibilities of fast bowling.
Probable XI: 1 Aaron Finch, 2 Parthiv Patel (Guardian), 3 Virat Kohli (Captain), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Devdutt Padikkal, 6 Chris Morris, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Dale Steyn, 9 Navdeep Saini, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Mohammed Siraj
Statistics and trivia
– Sandeep Sharma needs five more wickets to complete 100 IPL wickets. He has fired Virat Kohli six times at IPL.
– Williamson has scored 262 runs against RCB with a 65.50 average, which is the best among all active IPL teams.
– Kohli needs 100 more races to complete 9000 T20 races. He will become the first Indian to reach the milestone and will be seventh overall after Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Brendon McCullum, Shoaib Malik, Warner and Finch.
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