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IPL 2021 featured a highly competitive league stage in which seven of the eight teams nursed realistic hopes of making the playoffs deep into the season. The eighth team, Sunrisers Hyderabad, won just three of their 14 games.

It's still early days in IPL 2022, but Sunrisers are looking a little like the odd team out once again, though it's mostly because they have played just the one game so far while everyone else has played at least two. And that one game, against Rajasthan Royals, was a heavy defeat in which little went right, their bowlers taking a hammering while creating chances off no-balls, and their top order collapsing in a steep chase.

It was the kind of game that can make a team look worse than it actually is. If you treat slumping to 9 for 3 as the kind of thing that can happen to any team on a bad day, there were actually positives that emerged for Sunrisers with the bat, chiefly the displays of Aiden Markram and Washington Sundar in the middle and lower order. If those two can perform those roles consistently through the season, and if the rest of their line-up performs close to expectations, Sunrisers potentially have a stronger and deeper batting unit than they have had over their last three or four seasons.

The faster bowlers did okay against Royals too, but the spinners struggled. Washington is a defensive bowler best used in tandem with a proper wicket-taker; he was picked as the lead spinner on his Sunrisers debut, and his three overs and sixth bowler Abhishek Sharma's one went for a combined 62 runs.

With the rest of Sunrisers' squad containing no obvious solution, spin is likely to remain a problem area through the season.

Lucknow Super Giants, whom they will face on Monday, won't make their life any easier. They are coming off a successful chase of 211 against Chennai Super Kings, which brought them their first points as an IPL team after a close-run defeat to fellow newbies Gujarat Titans. That chase showcased a batting line-up of excellent left-right balance and depth, which is now set to be bolstered further by the arrival of Jason Holder.

Faced with this line-up and their own deficiencies in the spin department, early breakthroughs could be key to Sunrisers' fortunes.

In the news

Holder has completed his quarantine after arriving in India following the conclusion of West Indies' Test series against England, and trained with his Super Giants team-mates on Sunday. The allrounder is likely to slot straight into the XI against his old franchise.

Likely XIs

Lucknow Super Giants: 1 KL Rahul (capt), 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Manish Pandey, 4 Evin Lewis, 5 Deepak Hooda, 6 Ayush Badoni, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Jason Holder, 9 Dushmantha Chameera, 10 Ravi Bishnoi, 11 Avesh Khan
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Kane Williamson (capt), 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 5 Aiden Markram, 6 Abdul Samad, 7 Romario Shepherd, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Umran Malik, 11 T Natarajan

Strategy punt

Dushmantha Chameera took heavy punishment from Super Kings on Thursday, but Super Giants will likely keep faith in him, since his pace and zip are a valuable commodity in general - as he showed against Titans - but also for a more specific reason. Chameera has met Nicholas Pooran three times in T20 cricket - all in West Indies-Sri Lanka games last year - and dismissed him three times in just six balls.

When Pooran, probably Sunrisers' most dangerous batter, comes to the crease, Super Giants might want to bowl Chameera from one end and Ravi Bishnoi from the other. Bishnoi's over-the-wicket angle, accentuated by a beyond-vertical release and a high proportion of wrong'uns, has troubled a lot of left-handers, and Pooran is one of them: he's scored just 36 runs off 33 balls from Bishnoi across three innings, without being dismissed.

Stats that matter

• Manish Pandey is set to face Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the IPL after a four-year gap. In six T20 meetings, Bhuvneshwar has dismissed him four times while conceding just 20 runs in 19 balls.

• Evin Lewis (85) and Pooran (84) are currently the third- and fourth-most prolific six-hitters in all T20 cricket since the start of 2021. Lewis' 85 sixes have come in just 36 innings.

• Super Giants struggled with their death overs in their first two games, but the arrival of Holder might give them some relief. He has an excellent death-overs record since IPL 2020, conceding 9.03 runs an over while taking 15 wickets in 14 innings at an average of 9.53.