While history is very much with Chennai Super Kings as they take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in Match 46 of the Indian Premier League at the MCA Stadium here, the performance of the four-time champions this season fails to generate much enthusiasm among their millions of fans worldwide as the Ravindra Jadeja-led outfit keeps accumulates one loss after another.
Sitting at ninth position with just two wins to show for their efforts, the defending champions, while still not out of the competition, have a very slim chance of making the grade, even as SRH have overcome the disaster of IPL 2021 to be among the title contenders leading into the business end of the tournament.
While CSK would be hoping for Shivam Dube to play another match-defining innings after his unbeaten 95 against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 'Southern Derby' more than two weeks ago, the return of Devon Conway after a wedding break will boost CSK's batting. Sri Lanka's Matheesha Pathirana, who replaced Adam Milne, too has also joined the squad.
With Dube having scored the most runs for CSK this season -- 247 from eight matches -- the in-form batter, along with Dwayne Bravo -- who leads the bowling attack with 14 scalps from eight games -- will be CSK's key players in the contest.
The two teams have faced off 17 times in the competition so far with the Super Kings taking 12 wins and the Sunrisers five.
The toss too could play a vital role at the venue, given that of the eight games that have been played here so far, the team batting first has taken five wins, while the team chasing has been victorious on three occasions, with the average first innings score being 169.
Chennai Super Kings squad: Ravindra Jadeja (Captain), MS Dhoni, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Moeen Ali, Robin Uthappa, Dwayne Bravo, Ambati Rayudu, Shivam Dube, Chris Jordan, Maheesh Theekshana, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Devon Conway, Dwaine Pretorius, Mitchell Santner, Subhranshu Senapati, Mukesh Choudhary, Prashant Solanki, K Bhagath Varma, C Hari Nishaanth, N. Jagadeesan, K M Asif, Tushar Deshpande, Simarjeet Singh, Matheesha Pathirana.
Sunrisers Hyderabad squad: Kane Williamson (Captain), Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Karik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Saurabh Dubey, Shashank Singh, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Philips, Fazalhaq Farooqi.
Source : IANS