IPL 2017, Preview, SRH Vs RPS: Hyderabad Aim To Halt Rampaging Pune

When hosts Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rising Pune Supergiant meet in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match at the Uppal Stadium on Saturday, David Warner's team will be hoping to halt Steve Smith's winning run in the league. Pune have found great momentum towards the business end of the tournament with three consecutive wins and are placed third on the table with 14 points from 11 matches. Statistically, in their last seven games, barring a seven-wicket loss to Kolkata Knight Riders, they've won six.

Hyderabad are placed fourth with 13 points from 11 games. Both the teams are hoping to cement their place in the IPL Play-offs with a win. In their last meeting, Pune had beaten Hyderabad by 6 wickets.

While Rahul Tripathi's brilliant 93 in their last match against Kolkata guided Pune to win at the Eden, he will be expected to come good on Saturday too.

Ben Stokes has also lived up to the billing of being the costliest buy when he smashed his maiden ton against Gujarat.

The Pune bowling, led by Jaydev Unadkat, has been disciplined and they need to perform on Saturday to be able to stop orange cap holder Warner.

Though Hyderabad hasn't performed well in away matches, they intend to take full advantage of playing at home with a strong batting line-up consisting of Warner, Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques and Kane Williamson.

With purple cap holder Bhuvneshwar Kumar and young Afghan find Rashid Khan leading the bowling attack, Pune better be wary.

Squads:

Rising Pune Supergiant: Steve Smith (capt), Ajinkya Rahane, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ashok Dinda, Mayank Agarwal, Faf du Plessis, Ankit Sharma, Baba Aparajith, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Deepak Chahar, Rahul Chahar, Dan Christian, Lockie Ferguson, Imran Tahir, Jaskaran Singh, Usman Khawaja, Saurabh Kumar, Ben Stokes, Washington Sundar, Milind Tandon, Manoj Tiwary, Adam Zampa, Jaydev Unadkat, Ishwar Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Shardul Thakur.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner (capt ), Tanmay Agarwal, Ricky Bhui, Bipul Sharma, Ben Cutting, Shikhar Dhawan, Eklavya Dwivedi, Moises Henriques, Deepak Hooda, Chris Jordan, Siddharth Kaul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ben Laughlin, Abhimanyu Mithun, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammed Siraj, Mustafizur Rahman, Ashish Nehra, Naman Ojha, Rashid Khan, Vijay Shankar, Barinder Sran, Pravin Tambe, Kane Williamson, Yuvraj Singh.

(With PTI inputs)