IPL 2020: SRH brings Andhra's Prithvi Raj Yarra as Bhuvneshwar Kumar's replacement

IPL 2020 | KKR vs CSK: Match Preview, Predicted XI & Dream 11 Fantasy Picks

After the team got back on the winning ways MS Dhoni would hope the streak will be longer than the losing streak the team was having when it will meet the Kolkata Knight Riders in Abu Dhabi while the men in blue and purple would hope for a turnaround after a placid show in the last game against the Delhi Capitals. The Knight Riders were witness to Murphy’s law that states everything that can go wrong will go wrong while the Super Kings had their luck completely opposite to them, with all the departments clicking in unison. KKR’s bowlers were wayward while batsmen lacked steam, a problem that the Chennai Super Kings may well have resolved, at least at the top of the order. Chennai Super Kings were struggling to get going at a brisk pace at the start of the inning, but a shock of three losses on the trot following the age-old strategy of taking the game deep rang an alarm in the yellow camp. Openers came to all guns blazing and once they warded off their rustiness against the new ball, there were no looking for the pair of Faf Du Plessis and Shane Watson who made the mockery of the Kings XI Punjab’s bowling attack. It was not all about the CSK’s batting in the last game, as the bowlers, too, looked to have learned hard lessons from those three defeats until then and bowled well in tandem. Ravindra Jadeja was back to his best in both bowling and fielding and the return of Dwayne Bravo also bolstered the bowling attack in the middle overs. On the other hand, the Kolkata Knight Riders need a lot of resurrection in both the team selection and the batting order. Captain Dinesh Karthik’s form has gone off the boil in the last couple of IPL seasons and that he has slotted himself at the number four position leaves players such as Andre Russell and Eoin Morgan with far too few balls to change the course of a game. On the issue of the underperforming top order, the romanticisation of Sunil Narine as an opener has to be stopped and he should be replaced with Rahul Tripathi whose class has been wasted down the order. Tripathi has shown his credentials against the new ball in the IPL 2017 when he played for Rising Pune Supergiant and it’s high time KKR management back him to come good at the start of the inning. On the bowling front as well, the Knight Riders have been poor in execution, and the day when Pat Cummins has failed to give the team a decent start, the KKr has ended up leaking too many runs and putting too much of pressure on the batting line up. Kolkata Knight Riders vs Chennai Super Kings: Match Details Match number- 21 Date: October 7, 2020 at 7:30 PM IST, 02:00 PM GMT, 6:00 PM Local Venue: Abu Dhabi Pitch and weather The Kolkata Knight Riders will face Chennai Super Kings on a used pitch and that can bring spinners into the game. Abu Dhabi has seen the onset of due in the latter part of the game and that will be on captains’ mind at the toss. Chasing has been tough in the side but the Super Kings were too good while chasing in their last game and MS Dhoni may very well opt to bat second in hope of due and similar performance from the batsmen. Weather conditions will remain ideal to play cricket with the temperature hovering in the range between 30 degrees to 40 degrees and lower humidity during the night time will also help players in the field. Team News Kolkata Knight Riders Kolkata Knight Riders will look to amend their batting strategies and may look at Tom Banton in place of Sunil Narine who has looked a pale shadow of himself in this season so far. He has failed with both bat and ball and the KKR management may put its weight behind the dazzling Englishman who has been rated highly for his freakish batting in the shortest format. The team had dropped Kuldeep Yadav looking at the Delhi’s batsmen hard-hitting skills against spinners and opted for Varun Chakravarthy along with three pacers in Pat Cummins, Shivam Mavi, and Kamlesh Nagarkot. The strategy did not work well and the team is likely to walk back on it, bringing back Kuldeep Yadav in place of any of Mavi and Nagarkoti. Expected XI Rahul Tripathi, Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Tom Banton, Eoin Morgan, Dinesh Karthik (captain and wk), Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Pat Cummins, Kamlesh Nagarkoti/Shivam Mavi Chennai Super Kings The Super Kings are not known for changing their team too often and when the team pulled off a clinical performance in the last game, it is unlikely they will change it in the match against the Knight Riders. MS Dhoni would hope for a similar return for his bowlers, especially spinners and batsmen to carry on with the momentum and a regained touch at the top. Kedar Jadhav’s place in the playing XI has been under the scanner for a very long time but knowing Dhoni’s modus operandi, it’s unlikely that he will be shown the door in the game against the Knight Riders. Expected XI Shane Watson, Faf Du Plessis Ambati Rayudu, Kedar Jadhav, MS Dhoni (captain and wk), Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Piyush Chawla Kolkata Knight Riders vs Chennai Super Kings: Dream 11 team and tips Faf Du Plessis, Ambati Rayudu, Eoin Morgan, Shubman Gill, Sam Curran, Ravindra Jadeja, Andre Russell, Deepak Chahar, Pat Cummins, Kuldeep Yadav Captain: Eoin Morgan Vice-captain: Ambati Rayudu

Pacer of Sikh origin dreams big to play for Pakistan against India

Mahinder Pal Singh, a 20-year-old Sikh boy from Pakistan is dreaming big to represent his country of birth-Pakistan at the international stage. Mahinder wants to earn for himself and is ambitious to be a hero of big and eye-catching matches such as between India and Pakistan. He has also discussed his family life in an interview given to Pakassion.net and said that his relatives and friends residing in India will root for Pakistan in the matches when he will represent Pakistan. “Absolutely. It would mean so much to me to play for Pakistan against India at any level of cricket. If you ask any cricketer, they will say that they want to play in high-pressure matches, the big occasions where the world is watching. India versus Pakistan is always a special occasion and I would love the opportunity to be a part of this occasion at some point in the future in my cricketing career. I would love to be called a hero in a high-tempo match, against strong opposition and watched by fans all around the world. I have relatives in Punjab in India, my aunt lives there along with many other relatives who we meet on a regular basis. As well as this, I have a lot of fans in India, especially from Punjab who always wish me well and say that if I ever play for Pakistan, they will support me and Pakistan in those matches,” Singh told Pakpassion.net when asked about his aspiration to play big games and especially against India. Talking about the difficulties he has to deal with in pursuit of survival and becoming a cricketer from the Sikh community in Pakistan, Mahinder Pal Singh said that he never give up on working hard on his dreams and that he did not heed to the advice given by many to leave the fantasy of playing cricket in Pakistan because of his Sikhi origin. “Many people said to me, don’t be silly about playing cricket professionally in Pakistan. They said to me, as a Sikh you have no chance as you will always be discriminated against. But in my heart, there was this burning desire to prove people wrong and I knew that if I worked hard nothing could hold me back. I’ve had to struggle a lot and there have been some very tough days but I am not prepared to give up on my dream. I have encountered discrimination at many levels and some snide comments, but there are good and bad people everywhere. If one out of 100 people is racist, that means that the other 99 people are not. I tend to focus on the good people who support me and encourage me, rather than worrying about the 1% of the ignorant people who offer negative opinions about me,’ Singh added in his response to Pakpassion.net. Singh also said that he takes inspiration from Bhupinder Singh and Gulab Singh, only two players of Sikh origin who went on to play for Pakistan' domestic cricket but failed to go higher to the international level instead of getting dismayed from his path in trying to win a national call up. Mahinder Pal Singh had burst onto the scene after his selection into the camp of emerging fast bowlers organised by Pakistan's National Cricket Academy coaches and currently plays for Wahadat Eaglets Club Lahore where former Pakistan pace bowler Mohsin Kamal played for and Babar Azam played for this club until he was 16 years old.

IPL 2020: R Ashwin issues 'Mankading alert' to batsmen

Ravichandran Ashwin and his widely contentious act of Mankading gathered pace again when the off-spinner almost ran Aaron Finch out for strolling out of the crease before he had delivered the ball. The act of Mankading and withdrawal just at the last moment with a wry warning left all including the Delhi Capitals' coach Ricky Ponting laughing while sitting in the dugout. Now, R Ashwin has issued an ultimatum to the batsmen who will be playing against him bowling in the coming days of the IPL 2020 and the year ahead. The off-spinner took to Twitter to issue a final warning to batsmen and asked them to follow the rule of the game and not to blame him if they end up on the wrong side of Ashwin’s Mankading. Cheekily, he almost mentioned Ricky Pontin in his tweet as the former Aussie captain had shared his plans to convince Ashwin to avoid Mankading in this season. Ashwin was also candid about his relationship with Aaron Finch whom he had served notice in the last game and said that the Aussie white-ball captain and he share a good bond of friendship between them. Ashwin got his name linked to Mankading after his dismissal of Jos Buttler in the last IPL that created a wider debate on the conflict between ethics and rules of the game.

IPL 2020 | RCB vs DC: Hits and Flops as Virat Kohli’s Challengers surrender to Delhi’s all-round performance

In a yet another one-sided affair in the IPL, the most balanced looking side Delhi Capitals defeated in form Royal Challengers Bangalore by a huge margin of 59 runs in Dubai. Touted to be one of the best clashes of the season, the game got off to a good start as Delhi’s openers, after being sent in to bat first made good use of the opportunity and made 67 runs in the first seven overs. From there on, RCB could only play the catching game as the Australian Marcus Stoinis in the batting and South African Kagiso Rabada in the bowling departments made sure that Delhi packs yet another punch to record their fourth win out of five games. In this segment called Hits and Flops of the game, Five big influence players would be discussed to give a wholesome analysis of what went wrong and right for both the teams. Hits: #1 Marcus Stoinis After a good start, Delhi had lost three quick wickets in an interval of just 22 runs which had come of 29 deliveries. The three wickets were of two set batsmen in Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan while the third one was of the captain Shreyas Iyer who had been in great form in the last game. In such a situation, when the runs were hard to come by and wickets were continuously falling, Stoinis started playing his natural counter-attacking game instead of going the usual way of playing few balls to understand the situation. This was the best ploy as he found an able partner in Pant and the duo added 91 runs off just 41 deliveries for the fifth wicket. But Stoinis didn’t just stop here. After Pant got out, he again combined with Shimron Hetmyer and took the total to 196. In his innings of 53* of 26 balls, Stoinis hit six boundaries and two maximums. #2 Kagiso Rabada While Stoinis turned out to be the real Ace for the Capitals in the batting department, the bowling hero was Kagiso Rabada. He not only got the opposition captain Virtat Kohli out at the right moment in the first over of his second spell but also took no time removing the tail-enders and ending the match soon. At the end of the game, Rabada had figures of 4/24 in his quota of overs and was one of the chief architects of the Capitals’ victory. #3 Rishabh Pant It was quite after some time that Rishabh Pant played an innings that was worth the wait. Although not explosive in his approach, Pant played second Fidel to Stoinis, making sure that many wickets do not fall. In his innings of 37 runs of 25 balls, Pant hit three fours and two sixes to make sure that the acceleration of the score was maintained. His balanced approach towards the game meant that he gave many strikes to Stoinis to face the balls. Flops: #1 AB de Villiers It doesn’t happen often that you see AB de Villiers in the list of flops as Mr. 360 degree couldn’t quite control his shot off the ball of countryman Anrich Nortje, giving an easy catch to Shikhar Dhawan in the slips. In his small halt at the crease, de Villiers faced problems as he was roaming did not announce his replacement. Arguably the number one batsman in T20s, made only 9 runs off six deliveries, failing to deliver in a match that he was supposed to lead. #2 Moeen Ali: The English all-rounder finally became a part of the playing 11. But that was not enough as firstly in bowling and then in batting, Ali couldn’t do much. While in bowling he gave away precious 21 runs in just two overs, he wasn’t successful in batting either. The 33-year-old Birmingham born scored just 11 runs off 13 balls in the game. With this win, Delhi has now reached the top spot on the points table and it would boost the confidence of the players who would be rejuvenated to face Rajasthan Royals on 9th October. RCB on the other hand would like to sort out the silly mistakes when they face in-form Super Kings on 10th October. Powered by Froala Editor