IPL 2017 Player battles: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad Top 4 player encounters to look for

#3 Yusuf Pathan vs Rashid Khan

Rashid Khan has been the pick of the bowlers for SRH this season

The KKR-SRH tie has set the stage for a high-voltage clash of two Pathans, a Gujarati Pathan and an Afghani Pathan. It’s going to be the might of Yusuf Pathan versus the guile of young Rashid Khan. While heavily-built Yusuf is known for tonking spinners, young Rashid has emerged as a trump card for the Orange Army.

The rookie leggie from Afghanistan has six wickets from three matches with an exceptional economy of 6.16. He possesses a well-disguised googly and his victims include some of the brilliant players of spin including Raina, Finch and Rohit Sharma. Warner will again use him as his wicket-taking option in the middle and that is where he is likely to run into Yusuf.

Though Yusuf has only six runs to showcase from a solitary outing with the bat this year, he can take confidence from his Man of the Match performance against the same opposition at the Eden Gardens last year when he had smashed 52 off 34 balls in that game. How he fares against the young tweaker on Saturday will be interesting to see.