IPL 2021 : SRH V KKR Preview & Predicted XIs

SRH V KKR – HEAD TO HEAD : 19 MATCHES

KKR WON : 12, SRH WON : 7

Sunrisers Hyderabad have been one of the most consistent teams in the IPL. Last year, under the leadership of David Warner, they made it into the playoffs for the fifth consecutive time. One of the highlights of their 2020 campaign was the emergence of Wriddhiman Saha as an opener. He at times even outplayed Warner and SRH are likely to stick to this opening combination even as they have hard-hitting English opener YJB in their ranks. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was ruled out of the IPL 2020 but has now fully recovered and this will be huge boost for SRH.

Kolkata Knight Riders, on the other hand, had a not-so-good season in 2020. They looked uncertain for the most part of their campaign and eventually missed out on the playoffs spot. Eoin Morgan replaced Dinesh Karthik as the captain midway through the season, Andre Russell had a quite underwhelming season with the bat, Pat Cummins got to his best later in the season but all this is done now. KKR would like to start fresh this time and there’s no better than English WC winning captain to lead them.

Coming to the team news, Saha is likely to open with Warner even as they have Bairstow and Roy in their ranks. Williamson, Pandey and Jadhav are most probably going to form the middle order. They will have to chose between Jason Holder and Mohammad Nabi and with the match being played at Chepauk, Nabi might make it into the XI ahead of Holder. SRH have unarguably the best bowling line up of the IPL. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, Natarajan and Rashid Khan is a dream T20 bowling line-up.

It would be interesting to see who opens the batting for KKR. Shubman Gill and Rahul Tripathi look certain to open at this time. Batting positions of Morgan, Karthik and Russell would be the key for them going into the tournament.  KKR might bring in Harbhajan Singh, given the conditions at Chepauk.

Both SRH and KKR have an abysmal record at Chepauk. KKR have a 22% win percentage while SRH are yet to win a game here. Both teams would look to improve their record.

Probable XIs :

SRH :  David Warner (C), Wriddhiman Saha, Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Kedar Jadhav, Mohammad Nabi, Abdul Samad, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan

KKR : Shubman Gill, Rahul Tripathi, Nitish Rana, Eoin Morgan (C), Dinesh Karthik, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins, Harbhajan Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy