Do-or-die for SRH

Hyderabad: Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) goes into Sunday’s showdown against the rampaging fifth edition winner Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium (RGICS) fully aware that a loss will surely place them alongside Delhi Daredevils in the pits. From an impressive comeback into the top four, SRH (eight points from ten outings) is now struggling to come to terms that they are on the verge of elimination bar some miraculous arithmetic jugglery, which anyway looks most unlikely.

It is time the team management does some honest soul-searching and goes about with a revised strategy in order to salvage pride and lost glory. This comes in startling contrast to the visiting team that is riding high, including in the way skipper Gautam Gambhir has found his flamboyance. If SRH have lost two matches in succession (to Mumbai and Punjab), Kolkata (ten points from as many matches) comes riding on a hat-trick of wins and will hope to fully consolidate its position in the top four.

Quite ironically, if RGICS was a happy hunting ground for SRH in the previous edition, this time they have surrendered both of the matches they hosted. The batsmen let the team down against Mumbai Indians while the bowlers came a cropper against Punjab, despite the team posting a massive 205-run target.

If the morale of Kolkata has been boosted by their recent wins and the return to form of Gambhir and Robin Uthappa, the problem that begets Hyderabad is that it has not exactly jelled as a team. There is a lack of cohesion with either the batsmen or the bowlers coming good, and that too in patches. The resurgent Kolkata Knight Riders begin with the marginal psychological edge, which could eventually prove the decisive factor.

Squads (from): Sunrisers Hyderabad: Shikhar Dhawan (C), Dale Steyn, David Warner, Darren Sammy, Amit Mishra, Aaron Finch, irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Brendan Taylor, M Henriques, Venugopala Rao, Jason Holder, S Aniruddha, Manprit Juneja, K L Rahul, Amit Paunikar, Naman Ojha, Ricky Bhui, Ashish Reddy, Chama Milind, Parvez Rasool, Prashant Parameswaran and Karn Sharma. Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (C), Sunil Narine, Jacques Kallis, Robin Uthappa, Piyush Chawla, Yusuf Pathan, Shakib Al Hasan, Morne Morkel, Vinay Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Manish Pandey, Chris Lynn, Pat Cummins, Ryan ten Doeschate, Suryakumar Yadav, Andre Russel, Manvinder Bisla, Veer Pratap Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Debabrata Das and Sayan Mondal.