Match facts
Friday, April 5, 2013
After the top two teams of last year's points table kicked-off the
carnival on Wednesday, the bottom two will meet in Hyderabad on Friday.
While the host city has a new team - Sunrisers Hyderabad - led by the
same captain Kumar Sangakkara, Pune Warriors have a new captain - Angelo
Mathews - after Michael Clarke was ruled out of the entire season.Sunrisers will feel the absence of an in-from Shikhar Dhawan, who was
Deccan Chargers' leading run-scorer last season. After retaining 20
players from the Chargers, Sunrisers revamped their leadership, bringing
together Tom Moody and Sangakkara, who had worked together as coach and
captain for Sri Lanka. They also have overseas pace options in Dale
Steyn and Clint McKay, and allrounders Darren Sammy and Thisara Perera,
but only Steyn picks himself.
Warriors had an unsettled team last year and the addition of Mathews,
Ajantha Mendis, Ross Taylor, Abhishek Nayar, and the return of Yuvraj
Singh, will bolster their prospects. Steve Smith is more a batsman than
allrounder these days and Warriors will be tempted to include Clarke's
replacement, Aaron Finch, who scored two fifties and a hundred against
England Lions recently. With Marlon Samuels, Luke Wright, Wayne Parnell
also in the squad, a right balance might not be easy to find.
Yuvraj Singh scored consecutive fifties in the Deodhar Trophy and
took 3 for 39 and 3 for 19 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, so his recent
form has been promising. With captaincy off his shoulders, and having
missed all of 2012, he will want to score more than the two fifties he
scored in 2011.
Stats and triviaBoth Sunrisers and Warriors won only four out of their 16 matches last seasonWarriors did not have a single bowler in the top-20
wicket-takers last season. Ashish Nehra, now with Delhi Daredevils, took
11 wickets for them and was in 26th place. Their leading run-scorer,
Robin Uthappa, was 12th with 405 runs.
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