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IPL 2018: Players to watch as MI, SRH look to turn the tide

New Delhi: MI and SRH will look to get back to winning ways in the ongoing IPL season when the two teams meet at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Hyderabad, after a hat-trick of wins at the start of the season, have slipped to two consecutive defeats. However, their situation – at No. 4 on the table with six points from five matches – isn’t as precarious as Mumbai, who have lost four of the five matches they have played to be No. 7. 

That scenario makes it almost imperative for Rohit Sharma and his team to get a win and avoid slipping into the drop zone with Delhi, who are at rock bottom. 

Both SRH and MI will thus bank on their in-form players to end up as winners on Tuesday night. Here are three of those players to watch:

Suryakumar Yadav: He has been carrying the MI flag among the league’s top run-scorers with 196 runs in five matches at an average of 39.20. Yadav showed the full array of his talent in the 72 he scored against RR. His other half-century (53) came against Delhi. However, the young right-hander would still want to better his strike rate of 140.00 to leave an even bigger impact. 

Kane Williamson: The New Zealander, who is leading SRH this season in the absence of banned David Warner, has been leading by example and shouldering the responsibility to score big at the top of the order. His last three innings read 84 (vs CSK), 54 (vs KXIP) and 50 (vs KKR). But despite the prolific run of their skipper, SRH lost two of those matches to slip down the leaderboard. A total of 230 runs, however, puts Williamson at No. 4 among the leading scorers this season with an impressive average of 57.50. But like MI’s Yadav, he can cause even bigger damage by improving his strike rate from 131.42 to somewhere past 150.00.

Siddarth Kaul: He has been one of the unsung heroes for SRH, especially with the kind of variations he has up his sleeve to restrict batsmen in the death overs. His stats so far of six wickets in five matches with a best of 2/17 may not look menacing at all. But when a bowler can consistently deliver with an economy rate of under eight in T20 cricket, he will always be the one his captain can go to in pressure situation. Kaul’s economy rate at this stage reads an impressive 7.45.

Source: Zee News