The pitch is expected to be conducive to pace bowlingHyderabad is only above Tripura at the bottom of the Ranji Trophy Group C table. Jammu & Kashmir is just a point ahead of the host. Not much will separate the two when they meet at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium from Friday.The visitors’ vice-captain Parveez Rasool felt Hyderabad would enjoy home advantage, perhaps unaware that the local side was saved from defeat by rain in its last outing here against Kerala. “Our players have begun to gel and confidence is growing,” he said with optimism about his men. The pitch would be conducive to pace bowling. “There’s grass on the strip and the ball should bounce a bit,” Rasool predicted. The offie, who bats at No. 5 for his State, described himself as a bowler who could bat, a fact borne out by his standing among the top scorers this season. “There are four more matches to go,” he said suggesting there could be a turnaround in fortunes, as when the nation’s northernmost side bearded the lion in its own den in Mumbai last season. As for plying hisTRADE
, he believed wickets had to be purchased with flight and batsmen had to be deceived with a tighter trajectory when turning out for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL at this very ground. Hyderabad captain G. Hanuma Vihari was quite realistic in his approach. “We are not in a great position but as cricket teaches us, we must never give up,” he said. “There was no consistency in our batting, bowling or fielding at Rajkot,” he recalled of the disaster that saw his team skittled out in just two days to Ravindra Jadeja’s tweaking guiles against Saurashtra. “There is only one way now and that is to go up,” Vihari said of his side that had few options otherwise. “On paper, ours is a better side and we hope to perform tomorrow,” the top-order batsman said. An injection of speed will give his squad a different look this time. “It’s a sporting wicket, not one to favour batsmen, as is often expected. In our first four games, the pacemen were not given enough opportunities and this will be their chance to perform,” said Vihari. “Even as some of us scored centuries, there were not enough partnerships. They are a must to build up an innings,” he concluded on what ailed Hyderabad’s batting. THE TEAMS (from): Hyderabad: G. Hanuma Vihari (captain), P. Akshath Reddy, Tanmay Agarwal, B. Sandeep, B. Anirudh, Kolla Sumanth (wk), C.V. Milind, Sudeep Tyagi, Anwar Ahmed Khan, Vishal Sharma, Mehdi Hasan, Akash Bhandari, Danny Derek Prince, Ahmed Quadri, M. Ravi Kiran.Jammu & Kashmir: Mithun Minhas (captain), Parvez Rasool, Ian Dev Singh, Muhammed Mudasir, Deepak Minhas, Imran Haroon, Ram Dayal, Umar Nazir Mir, Rohit Sharma, Sameer Ali, Wasim Raza, Zahoor Sofi, Bandeep Singh, Asif Khan, Shubham Khajuria. 
No comments:
Post a Comment