1 week Ago By The Hans India
Desperate to arrest a worrying slide, Sunrisers Hyderabad will be eager to effect a turnaround when they host a power-packed Punjab Kings in their next IPL engagement here on Saturday. Last season’s finalists, SRH began their 2025 campaign on a thunderous note, racking up a mammoth 286 to dismantle Rajasthan Royals by 44 runs. With an explosive batting line-up at their disposal, the ‘Orange Army’ seemed poised to become the first team to breach the 300-run mark but their ultra-aggressive approach has since backfired spectacularly.
In their last three matches, their attack-at-all-costs strategy with the bat yielded underwhelming totals of 163, 120, and 152 resulting in crushing defeats, and leaving them languishing at the bottom of the points table. They have worst Net-Run-Rate of -1.629 as of today.
With the bat, Sunrisers Hyderabad need far more from their big names like Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, and Heinrich Klaasen. Head and Sharma, who played a crucial role in delivering explosive starts last season, have failed to find their rhythm this year. In fact, SRH’s best opening stand so far is a paltry 15 Head’s performance has tailed off dramatically, returning scores of 67, 47, 22, 4, and 8.
Abhishek, too, has struggled for consistency, with a top score of just 24 across five innings. Despite the presence of seasoned campaigners like Pat Cummins, Mohammed Shami, and Harshal Patel, SRH have struggled to make early inroads. The struggles continue into the middle overs, where they’ve failed to build pressure or claim key breakthroughs.
In stark contrast, Punjab Kings are riding a wave of early season momentum under the fresh leadership of Shreyas Iyer. Teams Sunrisers Hyderabad: Pat Cummins (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Atharva Taide, Abhinav Manohar, Aniket Verma, Sachin Baby, Heinrich Klaasen, Travis Head, Harshal Patel, Kamindu Mendis, Wiaan Mulder, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Shami, Rahul Chahar, Adam Zampa, Simarjeet Singh, Zeeshan Ansari, Jaydev Unadkat and Eshan Malinga. Punjab Kings: Shreyas Iyer (c), Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Nehal Wadhera, Glenn Maxwell, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Yash Thakur, Harpreet Brar, Vishnu Vinod, Marco Jansen, Lockie Ferguson, Josh Inglis, Xavier Bartlett, Kuldeep Sen, Pyla Avinash, Suryansh Shedge, Musheer Khan, Harnoor Pannu, Aaron Hardie, Priyansh Arya, Azmatullah Omarzai.
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