Whatever happens from here til the end of the tournament, Lucknow Super Giants can be very proud of their first-ever IPL win.
There will be those who will point out that only one match has been won by the side batting first so far and that chasing is half the battle won so far in this IPL.
The ball looked particularly wet and slippery in the hands of the CSK bowlers on Thursday night, one can’t deny that.
But still. The Super Giants chased 211 against the defending champions and the second most successful side in IPL history.
That takes guts, determination,good in-game tactics and quite frankly, just some superb batting.
Pretty much everyone played their part with the bat. KL Rahul made a rapid 40 off 26, Quinton de Kock top scored with 61 off 45 and perhaps best of all was the knock of man-of-the-match Evin Lewis, who hit 55 off 23, including six fours and three sixes.
But youngster Ayush Badoni did his bit, as well. His 19 off nine was extremely important and in the 22-year old they have a player of serious promise.
But they should be a bit worried about their bowling. Only Ravi Bishnoi showed real control and was inexpensive in that game. Other players took wickets but went at 10+ an over.
But it’s a win that will have given them great confidence.
Team News
Jason Holder was meant to have played last time out after finishing Test duties against England and having completed his quarantine period, but surprisingly, didn’t feature.
Having paid all that money for him in the auction, they’ll surely want him involved for this one, also because he provides that much-needed balance as a world-class all-rounder.
It should be a straight choice between Andrew Tye and Dushmantha Chameera for whose overseas spot he takes.
Chameera was good in the first game but poor in the second.
Tye only played the second game and though he took two wickets, was very expensive as well.
Chameera may be the one making way.
Player to Watch: Deepak Hooda
Hooda has been around for a while and is now with his fourth IPL team after stints at Rajasthan, Punjab and Hyderabad.
He’s one of those players who has always had all the ability in the world with the frustration being that he’s never been quite as good as he could have been.
But he’s still got time.
He had to wait till he was 26 to make his debut for India in both T20s and ODIs (earlier this year) but did a decent job when playing for his country and the management like that he provides an extra option with the ball, though he rarely gets through his full quota of overs.
But it’s as a middle-order big hitter/finisher that he earns his corn and it’s clear that this season in the IPL he’s prepared to go for more big shots.
He hit a super 55 first up against Gujarat and surely has a big all-round role to play for Lucknow this season.
He looks a big price at 9.5 with Betway to be their top batsman, not a bad price considering he’s already won it once this season.
And here’s our Betway review where we analyse what we like about one of the world’s best and biggest betting sites.
Lucknow’s Likely XI
Rahul, de Kock, Lewis, Pandey, Hooda, Badoni, Pandya, Holder, Tye, Bishnoi, Khan.
It must have felt like Groundhog Day. After that disastrous season last year, SRH started 2022 in the worst possible way with a heavy loss against Rajasthan.
They started by conceding far too many (210) and then made a really poor start in the chase, losing key man Kane Williamson cheaply and then their X-factor player Nicholas Pooran to a shocking nine-ball duck.
In the end it was left to Aiden Markram (57) to add some respectability to their 149 total with some late hitting but it was all too little, too late.
SRH aren’t the first T20 team to show so much faith in Pooran but the truth is he’s mostly struggled in just about every league he’s played in, including the Big Bash and the IPL, often saving his best performances for the West Indies.
Given his reputation and auction price, they need more from him.
But they’ll need better contributions from everyone if they’re to improve on last year’s disaster.
Team News
SRH will have to wait a while longer for Sean Abott to become available because he’s still involved in the ODI Series between Australia and Pakistan. He’s been decent so far and the fact he’s chipped in with some runs won’t have gone unnoticed.
They also have South African youngster Marco Jensen available to them.
But who to drop for either of them to come in? Markram got runs last time, Williamson is skipper, Pooran is meant to be superstar and Powell is the obligatory West Indies powerful all-rounder that just about every IPL team has this year.
But it may just be a little too soon to start making changes after just one match so they’re likely to play the same side again.
Player to Watch: Aiden Markram
It’s been an interesting year for Markram. Normally touted primarily as a Test player, then an ODI one and only then a T20 player, it was very much the opposite for him over the past 12 months or so.
He’s been poor in Test cricket, recently lost his place in the ODI team but has improved markedly in the shortest format and rather than batting in the Top 3 like he did in the past, has been at his best when batting at four or five.
He was excellent for South Africa in a poor campaign for his team at the World Cup and started well for SRH with an unbeaten fifty.
He can provide a good option as a spin bowler bowling in the Powerplay overs which is how SA use him in ODIs, but it’s primarily lots of runs they need from him.
It’s 8.08 that Markram top scores for SRH with 10CRIC and that looks an excellent price.
Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Likely XI
Williamson, Sharma, Tripathi, Pooran, Markram, Samad, Shepherd, Sundar, Kumar, Malik, Natarajan.
Venue & conditions
We’re at the DY Patil Stadium for this one.
There have been two matches here so far and they produced very different sorts of games so it’s hard to work out exactly what sort of wicket this is.
This is where SRH conceded 200+ against the Royals but it’s also where KKR were restricted to 128 against RCB.
And just to prove that low score wasn’t solely down to a shocker with the bat from KKR, RCB made a right meal of that low total, losing seven wickets in the process and only getting home with four balls to spare.
So it really isn’t easy to guess what a par score might be here until we’ve seen a couple more matches.
Interestingly, this is the only ground so far where the team batting first has lost the game. But don’t let that put you off.
An almost foolproof strategy if you don’t want to bet pre-toss is to try to get odds of 2.5 or bigger in LiveBet on the team bowling first, because the stats say the chaser has the huge edge so far this IPL.
