Sunrisers Hyderabad players during a training session. (PTI photo)
Hyderabad: The city is gearing up for a severe heatwave. Mercury has already crossed the forty mark and is rising. However, all of this will be lost on Vaibhav Sooryavanshi when he takes the field against Sunrisers Hyderabad, who are yet to make their stand in this edition of the IPL.Rajasthan Royals are the in-form side who will take action at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Monday, and they owe a great deal of their success to Suryavanshi. He had a reputation for keeping coming in this edition and Sooryavanshi does it in style, dismantling the bowlers and attacking with the insouciance of a 15-year-old.Go beyond boundaries with our YouTube channel. Subscribe now!Thanks to his prolific knocks at the top in conjunction with Yashavi Jaiswal, Rajasthan showed that they are equally good at setting totals or chasing them down.
Factor in Dhruv Jurel’s calm influence in the middle and it becomes clear why Rajasthan’s top three dominate the Orange cap standings. Sooryavanshi reaching 266.66 is the reason why Rajasthan is hurtling like a burning train.Abhishek Sharma also hit 218.64, but inconsistently which affected Sunrisers, who must have realized by now that last year’s 200-plus form is no longer a safe bet.
From being the envy of teams for cracking 200 runs for fun last season – SRH made 286/6, the second-highest total in the Indian Premier League, in their last encounter against Rajasthan at this venue – the Sunrisers now see revenge in the same coin.
One year is a long time in sports and if anything, the Indian Premier League is constantly evolving and the Sunrisers have scored in excess of 200 three times this year.They successfully defended it against Kolkata Knight Riders to win by 65 runs – their only win so far in four matches – and saw Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and more recently Punjab Kings, come up short on their totals. All of them were away matches for SRH, and they were placed in all four instances, including their only home match against Lucknow Super Giants, when they were undone by Mohammed Shami’s craft.Ishan Kishan was the hero with a 47-ball 106 in that high-scoring match between the two teams here last season – SRH won by 44 runs. If only the skipper can replicate those roles, he will give the Suns’ attack, which has been sporting an unsettled look in the absence of Pat Cummins, something worth leaning on.
| 4 – Sunrisers Hyderabad have won their last four IPL matches against Rajasthan Royals – by four wickets in Jaipur on May 7, 2023; With one tour in Hyderabad on 2 May 2024; By 36 runs in Chennai on 24 May 2024 and by 44 runs in Hyderabad on 23 March 2025. RR’s last win over SRH was by 72 runs in Hyderabad on 2 April 2023. |
