Starting with a win against Sunrisers, Royals will look to repeat their previous performance
Last season’s runners-up Rajasthan Royals will aim to repeat their previous performance when they take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in their first match of the IPL on Sunday. The Royals, under the leadership of Sanju Samson, performed exceptionally well last season. His bowler Yuzvendra Chahal won the Purple Cap by taking the most wickets and batsman Jos Buttler won the Orange Cap by scoring the most runs.
Apart from being a very balanced and strong team, the Royals also have one of the best spin trio in Chahal, Ravichandran Ashwin and Australia’s Adam Zampa. The Sunrisers batsmen will especially have to avoid leg-spinner Chahal, who took 27 wickets in the 2022 season. Ashwin, on the other hand, was recently impressive in the Border Gavaskar Trophy, picking up 25 wickets in four Tests, though the format is different. The batting of the Royals, led by Butler, is also very strong.
Butler scored 863 runs in the last season with the bat. Joe Root of England is also a part of the team. Apart from them, Samson, Shimron Hetmyer and Jason Holder are also adept at scoring fast runs. On the other hand, Sunrisers are yet to recover from their poor performance in the last two seasons. They were eighth and last in 2021 under the captaincy of David Warner, while in 2022 they finished eighth out of ten teams playing under the captaincy of Kane Williamson. This time, South Africa’s Aiden Markram has been given the captaincy, although Indian fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar will take charge in the first match.
Markram will reach here on April 3 after the two-match ODI series against the Netherlands. Mayank Agarwal failed with the bat while captaining Rest of India XI against Madhya Pradesh last month. New Zealand wicket-keeper batsman Glenn Phillips seems to be in form among Sunrisers’ middle-order batsmen. Sunrisers’ strength is their fast bowling which includes Umran Malik along with Bhuvneshwar and South African Marco Jansen. However, Jenson is not available for the first match.
Bhuvneshwar has been with the Sunrisers since 2013 and would know how to take advantage of the home ground. Squads: Sunrisers Hyderabad: Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Anmolpreet Singh, Harry Brook, Mayank Dagar, Fazalhaq Farooqui, Akil Hussain, Karthik Tyagi, Heinrich Klaasen, Mayank Markandey, T Natarajan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Glenn Phillips , Adil Rashid, Sanveer Singh, Rahul Tripathi, Umran Malik, Vivrant Sharma, Samarth Vyas, Washington Sundar, Upendra Yadav.
Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson (Captain), Abdul Basit, Murugan Ashwin, Ravichandran Ashwin, KM Asif, Trent Boult, Jos Buttler, KC Cariappa, Yuzvendra Chahal, D Ferreira, Shimron Hetmyer, Jason Holder, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, Obed McCoy, Devdutt Paddikal, Riyan Parag, Kunal Singh Rathour, Joe Root, Navdeep Saini, Sandeep Sharma, Kuldeep Sen, Akash Vashisht, Kuldeep Yadav, Adam Zampa. Match time: 3 pm. From 30
