Their campaign back on track after a poor start, new entrants Lucknow Super Giants will count on their batting prowess to get past Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League match, at D Y Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai, on Monday.
The Lucknow Super Giants did not have the best of starts to their debut season, losing by five wickets to fellow-IPL debutants Gujarat Titans, but roared back in style, to beat defending champions Chennai Super Kings by six wickets in a high-scoring affair in their second match.
In skipper KL Rahul and Quinton de Kock, LSG boast of a formidable opening pair, and the duo proved their worth against CSK by scoring 40 and 61 in a 99-run first-wicket stand.
West Indian Evin Lewis smashed an unbeaten 55 off 23 balls in a steep chase of 211 against CSK while, in Deepak Hooda, LSG possess a dependable middle-order batter.
Young Ayush Badoni, who has taken the ongoing IPL by storm with his six hitting prowess, is a treat to watch and would be looking to carry on his fine form.
Badoni struck a 41-ball 54 in his IPL debut against the Titans and followed it up with yet another entertaining nine-ball unbeaten 19-run knock against CSK.
But the form of Manish Pandey is cause for concern for LSG, who also boasts of hard-hitting all-rounders like Krunal Pandya and Jason Holder among others.
On the bowling front, Avesh Khan, Sri Lankan Dushmantha Chameera, Andrew Tye and Ravi Bishnoi were LSG’s main wicket-takers in the two matches so far, but they need to be more disciplined to contain the run flow.
The Sunrisers, on the other hand, were blown away by the batting of Rajasthan Royals in the 61-run defeat in their opening match.
They certainly need to punch above their weight with an all-round performance to register their first win of the season.
While the experienced Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1/29) produced an economical spell, the likes of Romario Shepherd (1/33), Umran Malik (2/39), T Natarajan (2/43) and Washington Sundar leaked runs against Rajasthan Royals. The management will be hoping for much-improved performance from its bowling unit in the matches to come.
If bowling is a concern, the Sunrisers batting department too looked cagey against the Royals and will be relying heavily on skipper Kane Williamson, Rahul Tripathy, Nicholas Pooran, Abdul Samad and Abhishek Sharma to deliver the goods.
In their only match so far, South African Aiden Markran scored an unbeaten 57 off 41 balls, while Sundar hit a blazing 14-ball 40, albeit in a losing cause.
Teams (from):
Lucknow Super Giants: K L 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.
Match starts: 7:30 PM.
