A lot of superstars will take the field in the SRH Vs RCB encounter, but as it always happens in the IPL, the superstar players don’t guarantee you success. A lot depends if you have got good domestic talent or not. The title winning teams over the years always had one or two underrated players who played crucial roles for them through the course of the tournament.
While everyone is expecting the star players to run the show in the SRH Vs RCB game, it’s possible that the underrated players from the two teams might change the game. Let’s talk about one underrated player each from SRH and RCB who is capable of making a match winning impact –
SRH (Vijay Shankar)
Vijay Shankar has faded away from Indian cricket after his dismal show in the World Cup last year. The injuries haven’t helped him either, but he is back to action again in IPL 2020, totally fit and fresh.
If you have a look at Shankar’s overall record in the IPL, he has an average of over 30 and a strike rate of 133.89 which is not bad, but the reason why he is underrated is because he has not had a season where he has scored 500 runs. He has just been performing in patches.
However, this might be his season as he is approaching the peak of his career now. Having played most of his cricket on the slow wickets of Tamil Nadu, Shankar is used to the kind of surfaces he will get in UAE and he has got the game for that as well.
Shankar is a power-hitter, but he doesn’t often play with the cross bat which is exactly what you need in UAE. He plays the aerial shots with the straight bat and has got the power to clear the ground.
Batting in the middle order, probably at no. 5, Shankar might turn out to be one of the stand-out performers for SRH against RCB.
RCB (Navdeep Saini)
Even though Navdeep Saini had a decent last season for RCB, he still is quite underrated, but he can be really handy with the ball even on the slow pitches of UAE. Because of his height, Navdeep gets extra bounce from the good length and some of the UAE pitches might not offer that much of pace, but they do offer spongy bounce which Saini can thrive on.
Also, the thing about Saini is that he has the ability to think on his feet and quickly figure out what the batsman is up to. In his short-career so far, he has double-bluffed the batsman quite a few times with his lengths.
While Saini is extremely good at banging the ball short, he can pitch the ball right into the block-hole as well. His precision with two extreme lengths makes him a very impressive white ball bowler.
Saini is likely to take the new ball for RCB, but his key role will be in the latter stages of the innings when the batsmen will be looking to go bonkers. He can change the game with his death bowling towards the end of the innings.
