Two struggling sides Punjab and Hyderabad face off each other in Thursday encounter of Indian T20 League 2020.
Match Timings: Oct 08, 7:30 PM IST
Team Preview
Punjab’s experiments are hurting their performance this season. Despite some good cricket, they have won just one game out of five and the previous encounter exposed their poor bowling one more time. Death-overs issues were their big worrying sign and Rahul require a big boost in the bowling unit. Against Chennai, Punjab didn’t even pick a single wicket. In flag-overs, they lost slight rhythm but still, management would back their batting unit. In all four defeats, it was their bowling who let them down. Except for Shami, Punjab haven’t seen a compact bowling show from any other bowler. Mujeeb Ur Rahman might be introduced to boost their spin as he can at least control the run-rate in middle-overs. Maxwell might be replaced with Chris Gayle.
Meanwhile, Hyderabad has the same story and after the Bhuvi’s injury, their problems are not stopping. In the previous encounter, they needed almost 11 runs per over in last 9 and they had 8 wickets in hand but Hyderabad failed to win the game on a good batting track of Sharjah. Bairstow is not scoring much, after scoring 61 in the opening game. Warner got his first fifty this season but he wasn’t good touch against Mumbai. Sitting at the middle in the table, Hyderabad needs one win to take the confidence back. The youngsters are doing impressive work for Warner but they have slight concerns in their bowling in the absence of Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Natarajan has a big responsibility along with Rashid in the bowling unit. Khaleel might be recalled after recovering from the injury.
Pitch Report
Dubai’s surface is slightly helpful for the spinners as the chasing sides suffered issues agaisnt the spin. Chasing is a bad call despite the dew factor. Any score above 180 would be a challenging total on this surface.
Possible XI
Hyderabad
David Warner (c), Jonny Bairstow (wk), Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Priyam Garg, Abhishek Sharma, Abdul Samad, Rashid Khan, Siddarth Kaul/Khaleel Ahmed, T Natarajan, Sandeep Sharma
Punjab
KL Rahul (c), Mayank Agarwal, Mandeep Singh, Nicholas Pooran (wk), Glenn Maxwell/Chris Gayle, Sarfaraz Khan, Chris Jordan/Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Harpreet Brar, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammed Shami, Sheldon Cottrell
Key Players
Hyderabad
Rashid Khan
Season so far – M: 5, Wickets: 5, Avg: 20.80. Eco: 5.20
David Warner
This season so far – M: 5, Runs: 175, Avg: 35
Punjab
KL Rahul
This season so far – M: 5, Runs: 302, Avg: 75.50
Nicolas Pooran
Previous outings: 33 (17), 44 (27)
