RCB look to steal an early march in the IPL, SRH pursue their first points of 2021

Well begun is half the battle won, they say. But in the case of the IPL that can hardly be considered anything but a hyperbole. While the two points against the defending champions in the season opener will certainly be a confidence-booster for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, a face-off against the team that knocked them out of the tournament last season awaits in the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The Hyderabad team who season after season manage to find a way to maximize their resources and make the playoffs will be keen to get off the mark in the points table, having lost their first game to KKR.

While all the eyeballs were on the returning big guns and the new candies from the auction, a returning Harshal Patel who had slipped under the radar grabbed the spotlight with the first-ever fifer against the Mumbai Indians in IPL history. Sure, a single game may not be enough to definitively say that all the death bowling issues have been put to rest, but Harshal’s accuracy with the yorkers and deceptive cutters, and slower ones is a huge step in the right direction.

Glenn Maxwell was brought in to address a specific issue and he did just that. Chasing a tricky 160, a team could well be suffocated during the middle overs, but Maxwell ensured that RCB did not lose breath. He brought out his full repertoire of unorthodoxy to keep the run-chase chugging along. If the management had set sights on resolving two problem areas from the previous season, the moves made during the off-season certainly paid immediate dividends.

The Sunrisers despite a valiant fightback fell short of chasing down 187 against KKR. The concern for the men in orange will be the lack of firepower in the middle order which haunted them for most parts of 2020. While it was later clarified that Kane Williamson, one of the key protagonists in swinging around the team’s fortunes the previous season, was unavailable for the previous game, the move to bat Bairstow in the middle order was not enough to lend sufficient impetus for the team to hunt down a massive total in Chennai. Manish Pandey played a magnificent knock, but at times found it hard to clear the ropes when push came to shove.

The Sunrisers’ well-rounded bowling line-up failed to stop keep the lid on the KKR scoring, expect that to just be a minor blip. Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan, and Sandeep Sharma as starters have 16 quality overs between them and could pose problems to any batting lineup.

Rashid against Maxwell and AB de Villiers. David Warner against Washington Sundar. Jonny Bairstow against the guile of Yuzvendra Chahal. Virat Kohli against the wily Bhuvneshwar Kumar. The fixture throws up multiple fascinating contests.

While the Chennai track appeared to have taken on a little less demonic look from the England Test series, the conditions would certainly not be as conducive as Mumbai has turned out to be for batting. Against a quality Mumbai bowling lineup, RCB needed each of the 120 legal deliveries to chase down 160, while the Sunrisers limped to 177. An even contest between the bat and ball between two giants of the league awaits!

Match details - 

Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Royal Challengers Bangalore

Date and Time: 14th April 2021, 7:30 P.M. IST

Venue: M.A. Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai

Likely Playing XIs:

Sunrisers Hyderabad - David Warner (C), Wriddhiman Saha (Wk), Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Vijay Shankar, Abdul Samad, Jason Holder, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan.

Royal Challengers Bangalore - Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli (C), Rajat Patidar, AB de Villiers, Glenn Maxwell, Dan Christian, Washington Sundar, Kyle Jamieson, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal.