Twice Indian Premier League (IPL) champions, the Chennai Super Kings, make their second appearance of the season on Saturday, when they host the Sunrisers Hyderabad, who are making their season’s debut at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
Chennai, who have never failed to make the semi-finals in seven seasons of IPL competition, got their campaign off to a winning start as expected against the Delhi Daredevils on Thursday. But the game was much closer than anticipated, with the Super Kings squeezing home by just one run.
The Super Kings like to keep wickets in hand to explode the scoring rate over the final five overs of an innings. Against Delhi their strategy backfired and they posted just 150. Luckily for them, the Daredevils got their own tactics completely wrong in the run chase, and keeping their best batsmen back into the lower middle order, and despite some heroic blows from Albie Morkel, Delhi had left themselves with too much to do.
If the super charged batting line up of the Super Kings performs so poorly against the Sunrisers on Saturday, it is difficult to see the home side managing a second great escape.
The Sunrisers will be starting just their third season in the IPL, having made the semi-finals in their inaugural campaign, when they finished winning ten of their 17 fixtures, a creditable first effort.
With some of the best International limited overs players in their squad, such as World Cup winner David Warner from Australia, and the leading South African speedster Dale Steyn, backed up by leading Indian players such as S Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar kumar and Ishant Sharma, as well as talented local youngsters, the sunrisers might be serious challengers for Kolkata’s title in 2015.
The teams have met four times in the IPL, with the Super Kings holding the upper hand to date, with three wins to the Sunrisers single success.