The Conditions The conditions have shown themselves to be conducive to batting in the previous matches, and the teams will look to take advantage of them, especially in the powerplay overs. The weather is forecast to be mainly sunny, so it should be a fine day's cricket.
The Teams The importance of this match for both teams cannot be stressed enough. A win will set them firmly on the path to the semi-finals, and a loss will set them firmly on the path to the travel agent for flight tickets home. Well not quite, but a loss will hurt their chances immeasurably.
Deccan Chargers: They have the two points more than Punjab, in as many number of games played. After their whirlwind start, they have tapered off a bit, winning just 2 of their next 7 games. However quite a few of their losses have been in extremely tight games that could have gone either way, so they can take heart from the fact that they have been in the running for 99% of the games. But ultimately it's winning games that will get them further in the tournament and they have to learn to close out tight games. If they do win, it will have to be their batting that will do it, since it is by far their most potent weapon.
Kings Eleven Punjab: They have also had an up-and-down campaign, but will take a lot of heart from their win against table-toppers Delhi. They put in a top-notch bowling performance and never let Delhi's powerful line-up find its feet. Up against a similarly powerful line-up in Hyderabad, they would hope for a repeat of the last match. Their batting would have looked solid had Jayawardene been available, but Luke Pomerersbach has not been an adequate replacement so far. However he is capable of hitting it big, and Punjab would be hoping that the fact that he's due for a big one comes good for them in this match.
Contests to Watch
Brett Lee vs Adam Gilchrist and Andrew symonds - It's always a great sight when players who are team-mates take on each other, but it's all the more enticing when the players in question happen to be in great form. Lee and Symonds are both coming back after layoffs, while Gilchrist is retired, but to see them perform you'd never guess it.
Pragyan Ojha vs Yuvraj Singh - Ojha has had a wondeful tournament so far, and against a player known to have a weakness for spin, he should be licking his lips. Yuvraj generally comes in at 4 or 5, while Ojha will bowl the middle overs, so there is a good chance of this contest materializing.
Numbers Game:
1 - The number of bowlers on each side (min. 8 overs) who have an economy rate of under 6. for Punjab it's Brett Lee with 5.33, while for Hyderabad it's Rohit Sharma with 5.86
6 - The most number of balls that Punjab have had left, while successfully chasing a target. They have never successfully chased a target with more than 6 balls to spare.
Trivia: Rohit Sharma's strike rate has been the second least amongst Hyderabad's specialist batsmen. Though he is second on the run scorers list, Symonds, Smith, Gilchrist, Suman and Gibbs have all scored their runs at a faster pace than him. Only Venugopal Rao has a lower strike rate than him.
Teams:
Deccan Chargers (From): Adam Gilchrist(w/c), Herschelle Gibbs, Tirumalsetti Suman, Rohit Sharma, Andrew Symonds, Venugopal Rao, Dwaraka Ravi Teja, Ryan Harris, Harmeet Singh, Rudra Pratap Singh, Pragyan Ojha, VVS Laxman, Scott Styris, Abhinav Kumar, Arjun Yadav, Chamara Silva, Chaminda Vaas, Doddapaneni Kalyankrishna, Dwayne Smith, Halhadar Das, Jaskaran Singh, Manvinder Bisla, Nuwan Zoysa, Paidikalva Vijaykumar, Sarvesh Kumar, Shoaib Ahmed, Azhar Bilakhia
Kings XI Punjab (From): Sunny Sohal, Simon Katich, Kumar Sangakkara(w), Yuvraj Singh(c), Mahela Jayawardene, Irfan Pathan, Wilkin Mota, Brett Lee, Piyush Chawla, Ramesh Powar, S Sreesanth, Karan Goel, Taruwar Kohli, Yusuf Abdullah, Vikram RV Singh, Ajitesh Argal, Amanpreet Singh, Burt Cockley, Luke Pomersbach, Ranadeb Bose, Ravikant Shukla, Ryan Ninan, Sahil Kukreja, Tanmay Srivastava, Uday Kaul, Vikramjeet Malik
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