CSK vs SRH Preview: Will Ruturaj’s team save its playoff hopes, or will Cummins’s SRH take a stronger position?

Chennai: Till now, when the teams of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Sunrisers Hyderabad, which have won most of the matches on the strength of their batsmen, will face each other in the Indian Premier League (IPL) here on Monday, the team performing well in the batting department will have more chances of victory. This match is very important for both these teams to make it to the playoffs.

Hyderabad, however, is in a better position than Chennai. He has 14 points in 12 matches and is currently at third place in the points table. Chennai team has 12 points in 12 matches and is in sixth place. As his batting coach Michael Hussey had said, for him now the remaining two matches have become like finals.

Whenever Chennai’s top order batsmen have performed well till now, the team has won. In such a situation, to keep his chances alive, Sanju Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Urvil Patel and Karthik Sharma will have to perform well. Of these, only Karthik performed well in the last match against Lucknow Super Giants. Apart from him, Shivam Dubey played an aggressive innings in the last overs but his bowlers were not able to defend the target of 188 runs.
Fast bowler Anshul Kamboj had earlier shown a good example of his wicket-taking ability but in the last match he gave away 63 runs in just 2.4 overs. His economy rate was 23.62, which is the worst performance by a bowler who has bowled at least 15 balls in T20 cricket. He will have to find his rhythm quickly. As far as Sunrisers are concerned, sometimes their batting appears to be the strongest in the tournament but sometimes it proves to be a failure as happened in the last match.

While chasing the target of 169 runs against Gujarat Titans, his entire team was out for 86 runs. Sunrisers will have to forget that shameful performance and show their old attitude as soon as possible. For this, it is important that Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head and Ishan Kishan maintain consistency in their performance. Heinrich Klaasen, who has been performing consistently well till now, was also unable to play in the last match. As far as Sunrisers’ bowling is concerned, its captain and fast bowler Pat Cummins has proved to be economical but Ishan Malinga proved to be expensive in the last match.

The role of its spinner Shivang Kumar will also be important on the slow pitch of Chepauk. In the last match played between these two teams, Sunrisers had won by 10 runs and they will try to take inspiration from it. The teams are as follows:

Chennai Super Kings: Ruturaj Gaikwad (captain), MS Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Sanju Samson (wicketkeeper), Karthik Sharma (wicketkeeper), Dewald Brewis, Sarfaraz Khan, Urvil Patel (wicketkeeper), Aman Khan, Shivam Dubey, Jack Foulkes, Ramakrishna Ghosh, Anshul Kamboj, Matthew Short, Prashant Veer, Rahul Chahar, Shreyas Gopal, Gurjapaneet Singh, Matt Henry, Akil Hussain, Spencer Johnson, Mukesh Chaudhary, Noor Ahmed.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Pat Cummins (captain), Abhishek Sharma, RS Ambrish, Amit Kumar, Salil Arora, Gerald Coetzee, Harsh Dubey, Cranes Fultra, Travis Head, Prafulla Hinge, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, Liam Livingstone, Dilshan Madushanka, Ishan Malinga, Kamindu Mendis, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshal Patel, Saqib Hussain, Shivang Kumar, Ravichandran Smaran, Omkar Tarmale, Jaidev. Unadkat, Aniket Verma, Zeeshan Ansari.

The match will start at 7:30 pm Indian time.