IPL 2016: Fantasy Championship guide SRH v KKR

Kings XI Punjab continue to amaze with innovative and effective ways of slumping to new lows. With Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, David Miller and Mitchell Johnson, you would expect them to challenge for the title but I think we have seen enough of cricket to understand that star value doesn’t always translate to on-field success (think South Africa, RCB).

Delhi Daredevils, on the other hand, have somewhat turned things around with last night’s thumping win. Before the game Amit Mishra had expressed his desire to be amongst the top 10 wicket-takers of the tournament and boy hasn’t he taken a giant stride towards achieving (rather bettering) that goal.

Let’s get to this IPLs first double header then! 

Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kolkata Knight Riders

Both these teams are coming off defeats while KKR faltered because of their poor bowling performance, Hyderabad were marred more by their faulty batting. Also, both these teams have similar strategies to win games; they heavily depend on their bowling and their opening batsmen to get them home.

The Hyderabad pitch has traditionally been batting friendly and as I have already said always go with the inherent nature of the pitch rather than reading to much into the pitch reports given by Waqar Younis and Danny Morrison.

Now, I already have David Warner, Andre Russell and Robin Uthappa in my team for this game.

Manish Pandey and Mustafizur Rehman are the two players who interest me. Manish scored a brilliant 52 in the game against Mumbai and Mustafizur was the only shining light in Hyderabad’s bowling attack in the game against RCB. Now, as my team combination only allows me to make one transfer, I can opt for only one of them and hope for the other has an off day.

Mustafizur will always give you wickets (at least two) especially as he is given the mantle of bowling in the death, so you need to evaluate if Manish Pandey can somehow better that.

Considering the surface and the power hitters that KKR have in their lower middle order, I don’t think Mustafizur will cause much damage here. He could run away with a couple of wickets but not more than that. Manish has been in the form of his life and on a deck tailor made for strokeplay, you can expect him to go big again.

For the uncapped player pick, I would wait for the team sheets to come out. While I expect Kuldeep Yadav to make way for Umesh for this game, I would bring Kuldeep in if he plays as he gives me more chances of getting a few points from my uncapped pick. Deepak Hooda was a real threat in the last season but that threat minimizes if he is used too low down the order and hence I would go with Kuldeep instead of Hooda provided Kuldeep plays, if not, go in with Hooda.

The Sunrisers batting apart from Warner does not have much spark about it and hence I saw no reason to bring any of their batsmen into my ‘consideration set’. Bhuvi had a bad game last time round and with Nehra injured, there are no real game changers in there (except Mustafizur).

KKR would want to draft in Sunil Narine as soon as possible and that would mean Hastings sitting out. But Narine hasn’t been the same bowler since his action change and that is understandable. Only if he performs extremely well today, will I even consider him getting in for future games, but as of now, he sits out.

Colin Munro, Yusuf Pathan and Surya Kumar Yadav won’t be having fixed batting positions for the entire length of the tournament. While I expect Colin to come in at 4, if spinners are operating, he could be demoted down the order. So, I wouldn’t want to bank on players who do not give me a sense of assurance with respect to the amount of time they will be spending in the middle.

Batting Captain: David Warner

He averages a staggering 63.10 in the 13 matches played at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium, enough reason for me to captain him.

Bowling Captain: Andre Russell