Photo: BCCI
The IPL 2020 has almost reached its flag end. With RCB thrashing KKR by a big margin in the last match, the fourth playoffs spot is still very much open for grabs. Teams that will be prominently fighting out for that spot are KKR, SRH, RR, and KXIP. Taking that into account today’s match between the Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals holds much prominence than any other match that is scheduled to happen this week. But both teams have a lot of selection headaches going into this match. RR is still struggling to find the right balance whereas SRH is hit with a hamstring injury to their lead batsmen Kane Williamson. Here we look at the possible playing XIs for both the teams for this match.
Rajasthan Royals have so far tried out several combinations, but none seems to work well for them. After the long permutation and combinations that they played with their playing eleven, they now finally at least seemed to have found out that Robin Uthappa is best suited at the top of the order. He is expected to retain his place at the top. Despite constant failures, Ben Stokes is still expected to open the innings with him owing to the left-right combinations and his poor numbers in the middle in the T20s. Smith and Samson will follow them and Buttler will be slotted in as the finisher just like what they did in the last match. They are most likely to retain the bowling unit that restricted CSK cheaply in the last match. Indian domestic all-rounders Rahul Tewatia and Riyan Parag will fill in at number six and seven to complete the eleven.
RR Playing XI: Ben Stokes, Robin Uthappa, Steve Smith, Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, Riyan Parag, Rahul Tewatia, Jofra Archer, Shreyas Gopal, Kartik Tyagi, Ankit Rajpoot
SRH have suffered a big blow as one of their premier batsmen Kane Williamson has suffered a hamstring injury in the last match. Given the assistance that the Dubai pitch has offered to hit the deck kind of bowlers, the West Indies captain Jason Holder is expected to replace him in the eleven. The rest of the team is expected to be retained and David Warner, who batted in the middle order in the last match is expected to get back his opening spot. It was most probably a forced change rather than a strategically taken decision as Kane was suffering a hamstring injury. The addition of Holder would strengthen their bowling attack in the absence of Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
SRH Playing XI: David Warner, Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey, Priyam Garg, Vijay Shankar, Abdul Samad, Jason Holder, Rashid Khan, T Natarajan, Basil Thampi, Sandeep Sharma
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