IPL 2019: David Warner Gears Up For Final Show As SunRisers Hyderabad Host Kings XI Punjab

David Warner made an impressive comeback to the Indian Premier League (IPL) after having missed the entire 2018 season due to a year-long ban following the infamous ball-tampering scandal in South Africa. The Australian batsman is currently the leading run-scorer in IPL 2019 with 611 runs in 11 matches. David Warner has scored a century and seven fifty-plus knocks for SunRisers Hyderabad this season. However, he will make his last appearance in IPL 2019 when SRH host KXIP at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Monday. David Warner will leave for Australia's World Cup preparations along with Steve Smith and Marcus Stoinis.

With IPL's second highest scorer Jonny Bairstow (445) already back home, Sunrisers will face the problem in the last two games as they will dearly miss their high-flying opening pair.

In all the five games that they have won this season, Warner-Bairstow combination worked wonders, and their defeats had been much about middle-order collapses and poor death bowling.

Kings XI Punjab led by their mercurial skipper Ravichandran Ashwin will be aiming to be more consistent in winning key moments of the game.

Ashwin and the wily Mohammed Shami will like to pose a few tough questions for the Sunrisers middle-order, where save Manish Pandey's odd knock, has been at their worst in the tournament.

With both teams locked on 10 points from 11 games, a win will give either some breathing space ahead of their final two matches.

Sunrisers' skipper Kane Williamson, who has been out in most games due to injury, will like to get the best out of Warner, one last time this season which will be like a shot in the arm as far as their qualification is concerned.

Just like Sunrisers, even Kings XI Punjab's batting top heavy which has been reflected in their performance through out the season. Openers Chris Gayle (444 runs) and KL Rahul (441 runs) have done bulk of the scoring apart from Mayank Agarwal (262), who has come good occasionally.

David Miller (202 in nine games) and Sarfaraz Khan (180 in eight games) got their chances but didn't perform in most games making it extremely difficult for Ashwin. However the skipper will feel good about young Nicholas Pooran's show in the last game against RCB, where he kept the team in the hunt at the back end of the innings.

Teams (from)

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (captain), Basil Thampi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Hooda, Manish Pandey, T Natarajan, Ricky Bhui, Sandeep Sharma, Siddarth Kaul, Shreevats Goswami, Khaleel Ahmed, Yusuf Pathan, Billy Stanlake, David Warner, Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi, Shakib Al Hasan, Wriddhiman Saha, Martin Guptill, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem

Kings XI Punjab: Lokesh Rahul, Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal, Sarfaraz Khan, David Miller, Mandeep Singh, Sam Curran, Ravichandran Ashwin (C), Andrew Tye, Murugan Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Mujeeb Ur Rehman, Karun Nair, Moises Henriques, Varun Chakravarthi, Harpreet Brar, Simran Singh, Nicholas Pooran (WK), Hardus Viljoen, Ankit Rajpoot, Arshdeep Singh, Darshan Nalkande, Agnivesh Ayachi 

The match starts at 8pm.

(With PTI inputs)

Topics mentioned in this article

Sunrisers Hyderabad Kings XI Punjab David Warner IPL 2019 Cricket Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kings XI Punjab, Match 48