By Prakash Nair 
Hyderabad, April 13: SRH are at home tonight. That should matter. Uppal is their ground, their crowd, their pitch. And yet here they are, one win from four games, bowling attack leaking like a broken pipe, their actual captain sitting in Australia getting his back scanned. You could not write a worse setup for a home game if you tried.
And who do they get? Rajasthan Royals. The one team this season that just keeps winning. Four games, four wins, not even a close call in most of them. Riyan Parag is walking around like he owns the IPL right now, and honestly, after the way his side has played, you cannot really argue with him.
7:30 PM tonight. Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium. Star Sports and JioHotstar for those watching at home.
SRH: All Powerplay, No Plan B
Here is the thing about watching the Sunrisers bat this season. The first six overs are genuinely some of the most fun cricket you will see anywhere in the world. Travis Head comes out and just starts swinging. Abhishek Sharma does the same from the other end. Boundaries everywhere. The crowd is up. Your group chat is going mad.
Then one of them gets out.
And suddenly it is like someone turned the volume off.
The middle order has not backed up the openers once this season, not convincingly anyway. Heinrich Klaasen is there, Nitish Kumar Reddy is there, both decent players, but the runs have dried up exactly when SRH needed them most. Against Punjab on Saturday, Head and Abhishek put on what was reportedly the third-highest powerplay score in IPL history. Third highest ever. And they still lost. Punjab chased 220 in the 19th over and barely broke a sweat doing it.
Shreyas Iyer made 69 off 33 balls and looked like he was playing a friendly. That tells you everything about how SRH’s bowling went.
Harshal Patel, Jaydev Unadkat, and Eshan Malinga are among the three of them; they are going at 10, 11, and 12 runs an over in this tournament. That is not tightening up. That is actively helping the other team win. And without Pat Cummins around to set a proper death bowling plan, there is nobody to really fix it mid-match either. Cummins is the kind of captain who adjusts field settings in real time, takes the ball himself when it matters, and somehow pulls out a wicket when the game is slipping. Ishan Kishan is doing what he can, but he is not Cummins, and the bowling shows it.
Cummins is expected back around April 17, by the way. Tonight, he watches from Australia. SRH figures it out themselves.
RR: That 15-Year-Old Is Not Normal
Look, you have to talk about Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. There is no way around it.
Three days ago in Guwahati, RCB had posted 201. Decent score. Rajat Patidar batted well, Kohli got starts, and Venkatesh Iyer smashed a few at the end. 201 felt like enough against most teams.
Sooryavanshi walked in and, within three overs, had already made it feel like it was not enough. He hit Josh Hazlewood, Australia’s number one Test quick, for three fours and a six in four balls. Back to back to back to back. The commentators did not even know what to say. He got to fifty in 15 balls. His second 15-ball fifty of the season, both of them joint third fastest in IPL history. He eventually got out for 78 off 26 balls. At that point, RR needed 73 off 71 balls. Match over.
Dhruv Jurel was at the other end through most of this, by the way, and he was not exactly playing quietly either. Finished on 81 not out off 43. The two of them added 108 runs in 37 deliveries together. Together. In a chase of 202.
RR won with two overs to spare.
After the game, Sooryavanshi said he was disappointed he got out. He wanted to make 20 more. Kid is 15. Just hit 78 in 26 balls. Still disappointed. Honestly, at this point, you just have to accept that something unusual is happening with this boy and enjoy it while it lasts.
Ravi Bishnoi quietly took two wickets in that same game and now has nine for the season. Purple Cap. Four matches. Nine wickets. Some people are so busy watching Sooryavanshi bat that they forget Bishnoi exists, which is probably exactly how Bishnoi likes it.
Head to Head: The Stats Are With SRH, The Vibe Is With RR
In 21 meetings between these two sides over the years, SRH have won 12 and RR nine. Fine. But more relevant at this specific ground in Hyderabad, SRH have won five of their six matches against RR. Last season, they posted 286 for 6 here, the highest total this stadium has ever seen, and beat RR by 44 runs.
So the ground is on SRH’s side. History is on SRH’s side. Their crowd will be on SRH’s side.
Everything else is on RR’s side.
Four wins on the trot, balanced batting, bowling attack that actually has a plan in every phase of the game. Archer in the powerplay. Bishnoi and Jadeja in the middle. Burger at the death. That is a proper bowling unit. Compare that to whatever SRH is putting out right now, and the gap is obvious.
Teams for Tonight
SRH are likely to go with: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Ishan Kishan as captain and keeper, Heinrich Klaasen, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Liam Livingstone, Aniket Verma, Harshal Patel, Harsh Dubey, Jaydev Unadkat, Shivang Kumar. David Payne or Eshan Malinga as impact sub.
RR most likely: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel as keeper, Riyan Parag as captain, Shimron Hetmyer, Donovan Ferreira, Ravindra Jadeja, Jofra Archer, Nandre Burger, Ravi Bishnoi, Brijesh Sharma. Tushar Deshpande or Shubham Dubey as an impact sub.
Sam Curran, who was traded to RR before the season, will not play a single game this IPL. Groin injury, completely out. Bad luck for him personally, though it is hard to notice the gap given how well everyone else has played.
The Pitch and Why Winning the Toss Actually Matters Hugely Tonight
Uppal is a batting ground. Always has been. True bounce, fast outfield, and if the top order fires, 200-plus is a totally normal score here. The average first innings total sits around 180 to 190, but good teams push it to 210 without much fuss.
The real issue is dew. By the time the second innings starts at Hyderabad in April, moisture drops in from the air, and the ball gets wet. Grips go. Yorkers miss their mark. Spinners cannot grip it properly. Basically, the bowling side goes into the death overs with one hand tied behind their back. Captains in Hyderabad know this they win the toss and they bowl first, almost every single time, because chasing here in the dew is just easier.
If Parag wins the toss tonight and he puts RR in the field first, SRH will bat, probably post something big, and then have to defend it with their weak bowling on a wet ball in the back half. Against Jaiswal and Sooryavanshi. In dew. Without Cummins.
That is a hard situation to be in.
Who Wins What Tonight
Sooryavanshi versus SRH’s pace attack is the battle everyone will have their eyes on from the first over. SRH will go short and hard. Uppal’s bounce helps, and they will try to target him early before he settles. The problem is this kid has faced Bumrah and Hazlewood this season and come out the other side laughing. Unadkat’s slower balls are clever enough, but Sooryavanshi has seen clever before and hit it into the stands anyway.
On the other side, Jofra Archer versus Head and Abhishek in the powerplay is just as interesting. Both SRH openers are dangerous. Both can take apart any bowling attack in six overs if they get going. But Archer at full pace, angling it in and then straightening it, on a surface with extra bounce that is a completely different challenge from most of what they have faced this season.
In the middle overs, Bishnoi against Klaasen and Nitish is the quiet battle that could matter most. Klaasen loves this ground averages over 45 at Uppal, strike rate above 175, basically a different player when he plays here. But Bishnoi has been in the rhythm of his life this season, and his legspin with the extra bounce at Uppal will be hard to sight. One big wicket there from Bishnoi could change everything.
And then Jadeja against Ishan Kishan is worth watching closely. Kishan has batted reasonably well this season but left-handers against Jadeja in the middle overs is never comfortable. Jadeja bowls tight, fields brilliantly, and takes wickets at moments you do not expect. The kind of player who looks quiet and then suddenly the match has shifted and you are not sure when it happened.
What This Match Is Really About
For SRH, tonight is the match where either this season actually begins or the questions get too loud to ignore. One win from four is survivable in the IPL. One win from five starts to look like a real problem. Missing playoffs is not impossible from this position but it becomes a lot harder when you are also playing the table leaders at home and your bowling is this broken.
For RR, this is just another game to win, another chance to make a statement. If they come to Hyderabad SRH’s fortress and leave with a win, that sends a message to every other team in the competition.
Klaasen can win this for SRH on his own on a good day. Head and Abhishek can give them a start that puts 220 on the board, making the chase difficult even with dew. The home crowd at Uppal is loud and gets behind the team, and that matters in tight moments.
But RR are playing better cricket right now. They are more balanced. Their bowling attack has a shape to it that SRH’s does not.
This one probably goes to Rajasthan. But Hyderabad would not be the worst bet either.
We will find out tonight.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
