Manoj Tiwary and Dhruv Shorey line up among the potential fill-in players
Deivarayan Muthu30-Aug-2020Yusuf Pathan
A match-winner for Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders back in the day, Pathan turns 38 in November. With Super Kings typically valuing experience, Pathan has plenty of that, having featured in nearly 275 games in the shortest format – only Virat Kohli, Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma have played more T20s than him among Indians. Pathan, though, doesn’t quite have recent form on his side. In his most recent IPL stint, with the Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2019, he managed a mere 40 runs in eight innings at an average of 13.33 and strike rate of 88.88. With the ball, he sent down just one over that season before going unsold at the most recent auction.Manoj Tiwary
After finding no takers in the last two IPL auctions, Tiwary turned to commentary. Is there a middle-order slot for him now in the Super Kings side? Tiwary will be 35 this November, and last played a T20 in November 2019, but has worked with both Dhoni and Super Kings head coach Stephen Fleming when they were all part of Rising Pune Supergiant. In addition to some cameos in the middle order, Tiwary was a safe outfielder for them. In the 2017 IPL final at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad , where catching under lights can be tricky, Dhoni stationed him at straight long-on for Kieron Pollard and Tiwary took a smart catch in that position. Besides, when required, his round-arm darts can come in handy on the sluggish tracks in the UAE.Dhruv Shorey
He, too, might have the familiarity factor going for him, having been part of the Super Kings set-up during their title-winning return in 2018 and then in their runners-up finish in 2019. The 28-year-old Delhi batsman is largely known as a red-ball player on the Indian domestic circuit, but can also crank up the tempo in white-ball cricket like he showed during his back-to-back half-centuries against Baroda and Bengal in Kolkata in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in 2018. Shorey is also an excellent fielder – both in the ring and in the deep – and was the first-choice substitute for an ageing Super Kings team during his stint there. In IPL 2019, he pulled off a blinder as a substitute stationed at long-on to get rid of Andre Russell and hush the Eden Gardens crowdHanuma Vihari
Vihari can see off the new ball at the top and repair the innings in the middle order in Test cricket, but has not found his footing yet in T20 cricket. Having played 74 T20s, including stints at Sunrisers and Delhi Capitals, he has struck at under 115 and can at best be a middle-order fail-safe rather than a middle-order dasher that Raina was during his prime at Super Kings. Roston Chase, a Vihari-style player, though, has come good on the tiring tracks in Trinidad and has held the innings together for Daren Sammy’s St Lucia Zouks in the ongoing Caribbean Premier League. Pitches in the UAE won’t be too different from the ones in the Caribbean, but can Vihari emulate Chase there?Cheteshwar Pujara
Okay, we’re going a little left-field here, but can Pujara, one of the first names on India’s Test team sheet, be a last-minute replacement at IPL 2020? He last played the league in 2014, when he made 125 runs in six innings, including five in the UAE, at a strike rate of 100.80, for Kings XI Punjab. Pujara has found no takers in the IPL since. However, he did crack a 61-ball hundred – his first in T20 cricket – for Saurashtra in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy last year. “I am not surprised by this century, but I am sure many people are,” Pujara had told ESPNcricinfo at the time. Also, he has been training at his own facility for over a month with members of the Saurashtra Ranji Trophy team, so he will be more prepared than some post-lockdown. Will he get a chance to surprise more people at the IPL?
