It’ll be interesting to see, out of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), which team has the tendency of bouncing back well after a poor start to IPL 2020. While SRH suffered a loss owing to their own mistakes against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), KKR batsmen had succumbed to the Mumbai Indians (MI) bowlers. However, it will be the Hyderabad bunch that’ll be more worried.

Lack of experience led to them crumbling under pressure against RCB for SRH as they are too dependent on their top-order to perform. If Knight Riders manage to make early inroads, it would certainly help them to seal their first win. That said, KKR too has its own set of problems. 

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While Shivam Mavi was impressive, Pat Cummins and Sandeep Warrier leaked runs from the other end. Another bad game and memories of the last campaign could well start to haunt their bowlers as they are aiming for redemption. Execution is going to be key for the KKR bowlers with David Warner having a phenomenal record against the.

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While Rohit is the highest run-scorer against KKR, Warner only needs 36 more runs to go past the MI skipper. Coming to the conditions in Abu Dhabi, dew is once again going to be a concern for the teams, but with bowlers staying the game because of long boundaries, it’s heartening to see the toss will not be playing the decider role in the fate of the game.

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)

It’s highly unlikely Knight Riders will make any change to their playing XI. Dinesh Karthik had stressed he didn’t want to be too analytical about the opening loss, and rightly so, it’ll be harsh on the players to be warm the bench after a rusty display.

Probable XI: Sunil Narine, Shubman Gill, Dinesh Karthik (wk, c), Nitish Rana, Eoin Morgan, Andre Russell, Nikhil Naik, Pat Cummins, Shivman Mavi, Sandeep Warrier, Kuldeep Yadav.

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)

Warner will be forced to make one change as Mitchell Marsh got injured in the last game. The all-rounder has been ruled out of the tournament and the battle for the fourth overseas slot will be between Mohammad Nabi and Fabien Allen. If Kane Williamson is fit, he can also be expected to walk right into the eleven to give more stability.

Probable XI: Jonny Bairstow (wk), David Warner (c), Kane Williamson/Mohammad Nabi, Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Priyam Garg, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan.