IPL 2018, Match 7: Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Mumbai Indians – Match Predictions

The reigning champions travel to Hyderabad for their second encounter where they will look to bounce back and get their points’ tally off the mark.

Published - 11 Apr 2018, 20:05 IST | Updated - 11 Apr 2018, 20:05 IST

View : 23.2K

5 Min Read

Mumbai Indians, surprisingly, lost their first game of the season last weekend against the Chennai Super Kings by a slender margin of one wicket and that would have left them devastated. However, the games come so thick and fast in the IPL that the teams just need to push the bad results under the carpet and be prepared for the next game immediately. The reigning champions travel to Hyderabad for their second encounter where they will look to bounce back and get their points’ tally off the mark.

The Sunrisers Hyderabad, on the contrary, played a perfect game to start their season as they beat the Rajasthan Royals by 9 wickets at home. It was an absolute clinic from them in both batting and bowling as they hardly put a foot wrong in the entire game. They will want to back that up with another victory in front of the home crowd tomorrow.

Pitch and Conditions

The pitch for the Rajasthan Royals game was two-paced as generally happens to be the nature of most of the pitches at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium. There was a sort of spongy bounce and short of length bowling proved to be very effective for the Hyderabad bowlers. Hardly any batter was able to get on top of the bounce whenever the ball was banged in short.

This is not a very high scoring ground and apart from the two-paced surface, the other reason behind it is the dimensions of the ground which is not small. The boundaries are fairly big and it’s not possible to clear it if you don’t get it right out of the meat of the blade or you don’t have enormous muscle strength. Anything in excess of 160 would be a winning score here.

There was not a lot of dew the other evening, but it’s always a possibility at this time of the year, no matter which part of India you are playing in. Taking the dew factor into account, the captains will always be willing to bowl first in this tournament whenever they win the toss and this game won’t be an exception with regards to that.

Playing Combination

Sunrisers Hyderabad

Probable Changes – No change

While the captain Kane Williamson, Rashid Khan and Shakib Al Hasan were more or less the certainties as the overseas players in the XI for Hyderabad in their first game, they had two options for the 4th overseas slot. They could either have gone for Alex Hales at the top of the order or the X-factor of Billy Stanlake with the ball. They went for the latter and the move paid off as the tall Aussie quick made a difference with the big wicket of Ben Stokes. Now there is no reason why he won’t play tomorrow.

Once Hyderabad decided to slot Stanlake in, the other selection conundrum for them was who to pick as the third seamer out of Siddharth Kaul and Sandeep Sharma. Sandeep with his ability to shape the ball upfront and bowls good yorkers at the death was a strong contender, but the management eventually gave the nod to Kaul who is more of a hit-the-deck bowler and bowls into the pitch. The Punjab right-armer came up with wonderful returns as well, just like Stanlake and he is also likely to be persisted with for the Mumbai game.

Predicted XI: Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Kane Willamson (C), Manish Pandey, Shakib Al Hasan, Deepak Hooda, Yusuf Pathan, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Siddharth Kaul, Billy Stanlake

Mumbai Indians

Probable Changes – No Change

For Mumbai, the big question ahead of their season opener was who would be the specialist spinner. It was supposed to be the toss-up between Akila Dananjyaya and Rahul Chahar, but Rohit Sharma surprised everyone by picking Mayank Markande who is not a very familiar name in the Indian domestic circuit. The 20-year old caught eyeballs by removing three of the top CSK batsmen including MS Dhoni himself. He will certainly retain his spot in the XI.

Mitchell McClenaghan was another player whose selection raised a few eyebrows the other evening against Chennai as he had not been in great form in some of the other T20 leagues of late and he couldn’t prove his doubters wrong at Wankhede as he really struggled with his lengths. However, since Pat Cummins has been ruled out of the tournament and his replacement hasn’t been named yet, McLenaghan might just get another game.

Predicted XI: Rohit Sharma (C), Evin Lewis, Ishan Kishan (wk), Surya Kumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Mitchell McClenaghan, Mayank Markande, Mustafizur Rahman, Jasprit Bumrah

Team Comparison

Mumbai’s batting is immensely powerful. They have a couple of real game changers up top in Evin Lewis and Rohit Sharma, both centurions in T20 cricket, with the latter holding the record of the fastest T20 international century ever. Kieron Pollard and the Pandya brothers down the order can also launch brutal attacks on the bowlers in the latter part of the innings.

Hyderabad doesn’t quite have that power, but they have a few fantastic stroke-players who can play at a high strike rate even without muscling the ball. While Shikhar Dhawan will be the enforcer in the power play, Manish Pandey and Shakib Al Hasan’s skills against the spinners in the middle overs will be crucial.

Bowling wise, Hyderabad is probably a notch ahead of Mumbai. They have a perfect swing bowler in Bhuvneshwar who will extract whatever little be there in the surface with the new nut, while the pace of Stanlake adds a whole lot of sting to the attack. Talking about spin, Rashid and Shakib are two of the top spinners in the world in the shortest format of the game at the moment and it won’t be easy for the Mumbai batsmen to tackle them.

Mumbai will be banking on Bumrah who was not at his best in the last game. The 24-year old will have to pull his socks up and put on a good show, while Mustafizur will also like to raise his game and execute his variations better. The Hyderabad pitch will surely assist him a bit more than the one did at Wankhede.