We have an interesting contest on our hands. Sunrisers Hyderabad are flying high and are the top team in the Indian Premier League right now. They have virtually booked their place in the play-offs.
RCB are in the lower half of the IPL table and they know that a defeat here could well mean the end of their campaign. These are desperate times for Virat Kohli and he has been on the losing side in the IPL on far too many occasions.
Virat’s problem is that his players have been highly inconsistent. Umesh Yadav, his premier fast bowler, is hot on some days and on other days is taken out for runs with absolute ease.
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It’s the same with the likes of Tim Southee and Yuzvendra Chahal – they do well in certain games and fail in others. It has been hard for Virat to pick the right players.
RCB have only themselves to blame, having made major bloopers during the IPL auction by getting rid of KL Rahul and Chris Gayle, who have been the star performers in this IPL.
Instead, RCB held on to a seriously mediocre talent in Sarfraz Nawaz, who has been found out and will probably never play in the IPL again – unless he improves his game dramatically.
RCB have also dropped a lot of catches at crucial stages. It’s like nothing is working for them and except Virat nobody else cares. Last two games, even Virat appeared to be disinterested, which never happens with him. After 11 years, he has finally realized that he will never win the IPL with the RCB.
For Sunrisers, they are doing everything perfect. They have the best bowling attack in the IPL – everyone knows that. Now their batting has been strengthened with Alex Hales opening the batting with Shikhar Dhawan. Kane Williamson is as good as ever and Yusuf Pathan in the middle is a serious threat.
Prediction: Sunrisers to win and RCB to bow out of the Indian Premier League 2018.
The Teams
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Shikhar Dhawan, 2 Alex Hales, 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Shakib Al Hasan, 6 Yusuf Pathan, 7 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 Siddarth Kaul
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Manan Vohra/Parthiv Patel (wk), 2 Brendon McCullum 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Colin de Grandhomme, 7 M Ashwin, 8 Tim Southee, 9 Umesh Yadav, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Mohammed Siraj
Watch Sunrisers Hyderabad play Royal Challengers Bangalore tonight at 8 pm live on Star Sports!
