Sunrisers Hyderabad v Punjab Kings IPL Tips: Sunrisers under pressure

• SRH unclear on best XI

• Jansen value at big numbers

• Punjab death bowling ace

Sunrisers Hyderabad v Punjab Kings
Sunday 9 April, 15:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

Team news

Sunrisers have been beaten soundly twice against Royals and Lucknow. The fear with their hugely talented squad was whether they would know their best XI. They appear to have no clue.

They picked only three overseas players against Lucknow. Abhishek Sharma wasn't involved either. One from Heinrich Klassen, Marco Jansen and Glenn Phillips needs to play.

Possible XI: Agarwal, Abhishek. Triptahi, Markram, Brook, Phillips, Sundar, Rashid, B Kumar, Umran, Natarajan

Punjab's ace death bowling has won them two tight games. It is a major strength and sides may soon try to take it out of the equation by batting first. Kagiso Rabada can't get into the XI at the moment. Liam Livingstone is yet to arrive.

Probable XI: Singh, Dhawan, Rajapaksa, Jitesh, Raza, Shahrukh, S Curran, Harpreet, R Dhawan, Ellis, R Chahar, Arshdeep

Pitch report

The 203 Royals scored at Hyderabad in the first match there this term was a trend buster. Since 2017 the first-innings average had been 163. The heavy first-innings toss bias of 61% held firm, though.

How to play

Sunrisers are 2.1211/10 with Punjab 1.845/6. The Sunrisers are certainly giving pre-tournament backers the heebie-jeebies at the moment.

If they can get their best XI on the park and pick four overseas players they should be more than competitive. But they also need to bat first given that bias and Punjab's skill at squeezing teams in the chase.

Tops value

Aiden Markram is going to have to start leading from the front as he did for the Sunrisers franchise in South Africa. He is chunky at 6/1 for top SRH bat given he's likely to be at No 4. Marco Jansen is value, too if Exchange odds of 41.040/1 are repeated.

For Punjab, Sam Curran has great potential for runs and wicket so is a fancy for man of the match at 10s.