Right, here we go – it’s do or die for Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad. Sunrisers Hyderabad have the best bowling attack in the Indian Premier League. But that bowling attack, comprising of the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Siddharth Kaul and Rashid Khan has failed to deliver the knockout punch in the last four games played by them.
Sunrisers have been on the losing run for a while now, which explains their frustration. Bhuvi has failed to take wickets, Siddharth Kaul has been smashed around for runs and only Rashid Khan continues to be a real threat.
Rashid Khan is without doubt one of the best bowlers in the world and he has proved that time and again in the IPL.
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Sunrisers batting has looked good with Kane Williamson leading for them. Kane Williamson is known to be one of the best Test batsmen in the world, but here in this IPL, he has shown another facet to his game.
He has really gone after every bowling attack, and has never been bogged down. There is no question that he is one of the best batsmen in the world right now, along with Steve Smith, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. Of course, ABD has announced his retirement and Steve Smith is out of the game for 1 year because of his ban due to match fixing.
Kolkata Knight Riders are a very good team, but they need to make one small change in their line-up. They should make history by playing only 3 overseas players and playing the highly talented Indian fast bowler ShivamMavi in place of the perfectly useless Javon Searles. We have no clue what Javon Searles is doing in the team – he can hardly bat and his bowling is strictly average.
There seems to be some mental block in the IPL that causes many teams to play 4 overseas players regardless of how good they are. When you have better Indian players, you should go ahead and play them.
We don’t know if they are going to be bold enough to make this change. That could be the one move that could help them not just win the Qualifier 2, but also the final against Chennai Super Kings. But are they really up to the challenge of making such a radical change? We will see.
Prediction: This is a hard match to predict as both Sunriders and KKR are very good teams. But Sunrisers have a poor recent record, and for that reason we give KKR the edge.
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Chris Lynn, 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Nitish Rana, 5 Dinesh Karthik (capt&wk), 6 Andre Russell, 7 Shubman Gill, 8 Javon Searles, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Piyush Chawla, 11 Prasidh Krishna
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Shikhar Dhawan, 2 ShreevatsGoswami (wk), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Shakib Al Hasan, 6 Yusuf Pathan, 7 Carlos Brathwaite, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Siddarth Kaul, 11 Sandeep Sharma
Watch Kolkata Knight Riders play Sunrisers Hyderabad tonight at 7 pm Live on Star Sports!
