Upbeat SRH start favourites against RCB (Preview)

Having registered their first win of the season on Friday night, Sunrisers Hyderabad will be high on confidence when they take on Virat Kohli's Royals Challengers Bangalore in Sunday's afternoon game at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.

The RCB are yet to register a win after two games and the boys will look to turn things around in Hyderabad. But it won't be very easy because firstly SRH will have the home support and secondly with the sun beating down on the wicket, it could be that spin comes into play and makes stroke-making difficult.

Like David Warner pointed out after Friday's match that it wasn't the easiest of wickets to bat on and Sanju Samson's hundred showed how good a batsman he is. Though he was also quick to point out how things could be different on Sunday as it will be a 4 p.m. start.

While SRH look like a side which has a sorted line-up, RCB will need to relook the batting. They have failed to do well in both their games. While the 70 all-out in the first game was more due to the pitch conditions at the Chepauk Stadium, their failure to chase down Mumbai Indians' total of 187 at home on Thursday raised the question on whether the unit was too dependent on skipper Kohli.

Although AB de Villiers did score a brilliant 41-ball 70, there was not much support for him after Jasprit Bumrah dismissed Kohli for a 32-ball 46. The other batsmen too need to chip in and contribute to ensure there is enough balance.

This is something that SRH has been brilliant with, as was evident again on Friday. If Warner and Jonny Bairstow gave the team a brilliant start at the top by putting on 110, all-rounder Vijay Shankar hit a calm 35 off 15 balls to show how he has matured in the last 12 months as a cricketer. And when the going got tough in the end, Rashid Khan hit a four and a six off successive balls to take SRH home against Rajasthan Royals.

T20 cricket is mostly about the batsmen and RCB must get their batters to fire if they wish to register their first win of the season on Sunday.

Squads

Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner, Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey, Deepak Hooda, Shakib Al Hasan, Vijay Shankar, Yusuf Pathan, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, Siddarth Kaul, Kane Williamson, Martin Guptill, Ricky Bhui, Shreevats Goswami, Wriddhiman Saha, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mohammad Nabi, Abhishek Sharma, Basil Thampi, Billy Stanlake

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, Parthiv Patel, Moeen Ali, AB de Villiers, Shimron Hetmyer, Shivam Dube, Colin de Grandhomme, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Devdutt Padikkal, Himmat Singh, Milind Kumar, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Heinrich Klaasen, Pawan Negi, Washington Sundar, Akshdeep Nath, Prayas Barman, Kulwant Khejroliya, Tim Southee

--IANS

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