Two teams on opposite ends of the IPL table will square-off when Delhi Daredevils host the Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium on Thursday.
Languishing at the bottom of the table with seven defeats in 10 games, the Daredevils are all but out of contention of making the IPL playoffs. Shreyas Iyer’s men will need to win their remaining four matches and hope for a string of results to go their way to stand any chance of making the last four.
On the other hand, qualification should be no problem for the Sunrisers who are looking like the team to beat this year with a staggering eight victories in 10 matches.
BOOM OR BUST FOR DAREDEVILS
It was a seven-wicket defeat to the same opposition last week that sounded the death knell for Delhi’s playoff qualification hopes.
Iyer’s men had 28 runs to defend in the last two overs but let the game slip out of their grasp in a hugely costly defeat. As fate would have it, the side can still mathematically progress to the last-four though the odds remain minimalistic.
It was Trent Boult and Dan Christian who let the side down that time and those two will need to put in a shift with the ball on Thursday if Delhi are to have any chance.
HYDERABAD EMERGING AS CLEAR CONTENDERS
Coming into the game on the back of five wins on the bounce, Kane Williamson’s Sunrisers are starting to break away from the rest of the chasing pack.
Their bowling unit remains unparalleled in the competition and has gone up a notch in quality since the return of Bhuvneshwar Kumar who was mighty impressive in the win over Royal Challengers Bangalore.
In the batting, Williamson himself has been exemplary while the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey and even Yusuf Pathan have chipped in at crucial periods. As of now, there seems to be no chink in the Hyderabad armour and they are the indisputable favourites to go all the way.
LIKELY LINE-UPS
Delhi Daredevils: Prithvi Shaw, Colin Munro, Shreyas Iyer (c), Rishab Pant (wk), Naman Ojha, Vijay Shankar, Daniel Christian, Liam Plunkett, Amit Mishra, Avesh Khan, Trent Boult.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Shikhar Dhawan, Alex Hales, Kane Williamson (c), Manish Pandey, Yusuf Pathan, Shakib Al Hasan, Wriddhiman Saha, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rashid Khan, Siddharth Kaul, Sandeep Sharma.
