Hyderabad: Sunrisers Hyderabad will look to bank on their good-looking bowling attack to unsettle Mumbai Indians when the two teams meet in an Indian Premier League (IPL) game here on Thursday.
Hyderabad, led by Kane Williamson in the absence of David Warner who is serving a one-year ban due to a ball tampering incident, hardly broke sweat during their emphatic nine-wicket victory over Rajasthan Royals in their opening match.
Mumbai Indians, on the other hand, lost a closely fought match against Chennai Super Kings in the tournament opener.
Hyderabad showed in their first game that they have the most diverse bowling attack in the competition. India’s celebrated pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar leads the line with his swing bowling while Billy Stanlake has raw pace and Siddarth Kaul can hit the deck. The spinning department, led by Afghanistan’s highly-rated leg-spinner Rashid Khan, also has the likes of Shakib Al Hasan with his orthodox left-arm spin.
Shikhar Dhawan’s form is a boon on the batting front for SRH though their batting depth was not tested during the first match.
Coming to the visitors, Mumbai Indians has a star-studded team with skipper Rohit Sharma leading the list.
Rohit would would expect a better effort from his batsmen as 165 on a good batting track wasn’t par for the course.
Besides Rohit, Evin Lewis, who has two T20 hundreds against India, and the explosive Kieron Pollard would like to show their big-hitting prowess on Thursday.
For Mumbai, the biggest gain from the opening game was young leg-spinner Mayank Markande’s performance on IPL debut. He scalped the wickets of Ambati Rayudu and CSK skipper MS Dhoni.
Mumbai could see all-rounder Hardik Pandya not play due to an ankle injury he picked up in the last game.
Teams: Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (C), Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddharth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Shreevats Goswami, Ricky Bhui, Basil Thampi, T Natarajan, Sachin Baby, Bipul Sharma, Mehdi Hasan, Tanmay Agarwal, Alex Hales, Carlos Brathwaite, Rashid Khan, Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Nabi, Chris Jordan and Billy Stanlake.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Mustafizur Rahman, Pat Cummins, Suryakumar Yadav, Krunal Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Rahul Chahar, Evin Lewis, Saurabh Tiwary, Ben Cutting, Pradeep Sangwan, Jean-Paul Duminy, Tajinder Singh, Sharad Lumba, Siddhesh Lad, Aditya Tare, Mayank Markande, Akila Dananjaya, Anukul Roy, Mohsin Khan, MD Nidheesh, Mitchell McClenaghan.(IANS)