The tenth season of Indian Premier League cricket tournament got off to a rousing start yesterday, with defending champions Sunrisers of Hyderabad beating the last year’s finalists Royal Challengers Bengalore in front of their home crowd this time at the Rajiv Gandhi Uppal stadium, Hyderabad. Roy Henriques and Yuvraj Sigh scored fine half centuries as SRH set at huge 208 target and then bowled out RCB in the final over for 172. It was a good team effort by SRH under David Warner’s leadership.
Debutant Rashid Khan from Afganistan impressed everyone with a fine spell getting his first IPL wicket in the very first over he bowled, while Ashish Nehra and Bhunneshwar also bowled good spells.
In the second match today Risng Pune Supergaints will taken on Mumbai Indians at Pune. And we all know MS Dhoni will not be leading the side — it is happening for the first time in IPL history. Australian captain Steve Smith who is the new leader has some sweet experiences at this venue. In the recently concluded Test series he scored a superb century as the Aussies scored a big victory against India. It was the first Test match of the series.
Rising Supergaints, after their poor last year performance hope to put up a better show this time. They have some fantastic cricketers in their squad. Ben Stokes is going to be the star to watch. The England allrounder is in terrific form in recent times and Pune have big hopes on him. They have a decent bowling line-up in Unatkad, Dionda and the Australian leggie Adam Zampa, who bowled beautifully last season.
But Mumbai’s main worry is going to be Rohit Shama’s uncertainity. Rohit in fact has played only a couple of competitive matches after he suffered a thigh injury in November But they are fantastic team, having Jos Butler, Kieon Pollard and Ambati Raydu in batting line-up, while Jasprit Burah and Tim Southee can be difficult to negotiate on their days.
In the Test match the curator had to face a lot of criticism as the match ended in just three days. But we can expect a good track in this format and the average IPL scores here since 2014 is 170. Teams which have chased have won five out of the eight matches played here.
TEAMS LIKELY:
Rising Pune Supergiant: 1 Ajinkya Rahane, 2 Mayank Agarwal, 3 Faf du Plessis, 4 Steven Smith (capt), 5 Ben Stokes, 6 MS Dhoni (wk), 7 Rajat Bhatia, 8 Jaydev Unadkat 9 Ankit Sharma, 10 Ashok Dinda, 11 Adam Zampa
Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Parthiv Patel (wk), 3 Ambati Rayudu, 4 Jos Buttler, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Mitchell McClenaghan, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Tim Southee
Mahavaadi Sudeer– DD Commentator
