So second last game of 2016 Indian Premier League is set to be played between Gujarat Lions and Sunrisers Hyderabad on 27th May at Feroz Shah Kotla ground. Winner of this match will make it through Vivo IPL-9 final against RCB which is scheduled for 29 May. Gujarat coming into this match after losing qualifier-1 versus Royal Challengers Bangalore while SRH beat Kolkata Knight Riders in the eliminator.
Preview
Well Sunrisers Hyderabad would have never thought of that they would be playing 2nd qualifier as they hadn’t score enough runs against KKR in the last game. Captain Warner also accepted that they were 15-20 runs short but a great bowling performance led the side to be in the 2nd qualifying playoff for Vivo IPL 2016 final against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Yuvraj Singh was fantastic with the bat as he scored brilliant 44 runs that helped the side to reach 162 runs challenging total on this wicket. His great fielding effort to run out Munro was also splendid in the context of game. So he’ll be crucial again for the orange army. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mustafizur Rahman are the backbone of Hyderabad bowling and will be key bowlers to sustain dangerous Gujarat Lions batsmen including McCullum, Raina, Finch and Dwayne Smith.
Gujarat Lions had excellent opportunity to win first qualifier playoff when they took 5 wickets of RCB on just 29 runs score and 6 wicket on 66 odd runs. But they forget to take wicket of superman cricketer from South Africa i.e. AB De Villiers. So GL needs to work with their bowling a bit. Dhawal Kulkarni is having a great IPLT20 season and will look to perform on this Delhi’s wicket.
See more: SRH vs KKR eliminator match summary
Batting is the big issue for both the sides. They are highly depending on their top order batsmen. Gujarat wants McCullu, Raina, Finch to perform well while Hyderabad is depending a lot on Warner and Dhawan to score runs. Middle order is quite better for Lions as compared to Sunrisers. So it will be a good contest watch out on Friday.
Squads
Gujarat Lions
Suresh Raina (Captain), Ishan Kishan, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo, James Faulkner, Praveen Kumar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shivil Kaushik, Pradeep Sangwan, Sarabjit Ladda, Amit Mishra, Akashdeep Nath, Paras Dogra, Dwayne Smith, Eklavya Dwivedi, Shadab Jakati, Pravin Tambe, Jaydev Shah, Umang Sharma, Dale Steyn, Andrew Tye.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
David Warner (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Naman Ojha, Eoin Morgan, Kane Williamson, Deepak Hooda, Abhimanyu Mithun, Mustafizur Rahman, Yuvraj Singh, Barinder Sran, Moises Henriques, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Reddy, Ricky Bhui, Bipul Sharma, Karn Sharma, Siddarth Kaul, Trent Boult, Vijay Shankar, Ben Cutting, T Suman, Aditya Tare.
Check more: How RCB qualified for final
Predictions
Score: Feroz Shah Kotla wicket seems to favor batsman and spin bowlers a bit. Fast bowlers can take advantage of swinging ball by pitching it at the top. In previous game we saw that SRh score 162 runs which could be 180. So we can expect a high scoring game. The expected score in first inning is 165-170.
Win Chances: Though Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Kolkata Knight Riders in the previous match to be here in the second qualifier, they’ll still not be favorites to win against GL. The fact is Gujarat Lions are having an inform batting lineup with balanced composition. Gujarat Lions will be favorites against SRH and they have got 58 percent winning chances.