With their campaign back on track after a poor start, newcomers Lucknow Super Giants will rely on their agility to get past Sunrisers Hyderabad in an Indian Premier League game on Tuesday. LSG didn’t have the best start to their debut season, losing by five wickets to fellow IPL debutants Gujarat Titans.
But they roared back in style by beating defending champions Chennai Super Kings six wickets in a high-scoring affair in their second match.
In skippered KL Rahul and Quinton de Kock, LSG boasted a formidable opening pair, and they proved their worth against CSK by scoring 40 and 61 in a 99-run first-wicket tie.
West Indian Evin Lewis crushed 55 of 23 balls unbeaten in a steep 211 chase against CSK, while LSG had a reliable mid-range batter in Deepak Hooda.
The young Ayush Badoni, who has taken the ongoing IPL by storm with his six striker, is a sight to behold and would like to maintain his good form.
Badoni hit a 41-ball 54 in his IPL debut against Titans and followed it up with another entertaining nine-ball undefeated 19-run knockout against CSK.
But Manish Pandey’s form will be a source of concern for LSG, who also boast of tough all-rounders such as Krunal Pandya and Jason Holder.
On the bowling front, Avesh Khan, Sri Lankan Dushmantha Chameera, Andrew Tye and Ravi Bishnoi have been the main wicket takers for LSG in the two matches so far, but they need to be more disciplined to keep the run flow in check.
Sunrisers, on the other hand, were blown away by the punching power of the Rajasthan Royals in a 61-run defeat in their opening game.
The Sunrisers players, who are made up of a mediocre roster, have to be above their weight.
While veteran Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1/29) produced an economic spell, Romario Shepherd (1/33), Umran Malik (2/39), T Natarajan (2/43) and Washington Sundar leaked runs against RR.
And Sunrisers’ team management expects a much improved performance from its bowling unit in the coming matches.
If bowling is a concern, the Sunrisers batting division also looked coy against RR and would rely heavily on skipper Kane Williamson, Rahul Tripathy, Nicholas Pooran, Abdul Samad and Abhishek Sharma to supply the goods.
In their only match to date, South African Aiden Markran played an unbeaten 57-run knock-off 41 balls, while Sundar hit a blazing 14-ball 40, albeit in a losing cause.
Sunrsiers would be looking for a complete, all-around performance to take their first win of the season.
Lucknow Supergiants: KL Rahul (Captain), Manan Vohra, Evin Lewis, Manish Pandey, Quinton De Kock, Ravi Bishnoi, Dushmantha Chameera, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mohsin Khan, Mayank Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Avesh Khan, Andrew Tye, Marcus Stoinis, Kyle Mayers, Karan Sharma, Krishnappa Gowtham, Ayush Badoni, Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya, Jason Holder.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (Captain), Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nicholas Pooran, Abdul Samad, Priyam Garg, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Washington Sundar, Romario Shepherd, Marco Jansen, J Suchith, Shreyas Gopal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sean Abbott, Kartik Tyagi, Saurabh Tiwary, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Umran Malik, T Natarajan.
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Match starts at 7:30 PM.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
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