Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) will be looking forward to beating the defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI) once again when the two teams meet for the second time in the 36th game of the Pepsi Indian Premier League 2014 to be played at the Rajiv Gandhi Cricket Stadium, Hyderabad, on Monday.

Playing in their home ground, SRH definitely has an advantage as they have won four of the eight matches they played so far in this season, while MI has just two wins from an equal number of games.

In their latest outing against Delhi Daredevils, SRH succeeded in earning two valuable points in a rain-affected match. While their bowlers restricted Delhi to 143 runs, Hyderabad batsmen were only required to get only 43 runs from five overs - thanks to the Duckworth-Lewis method. And they achieved it with four balls remaining.

On the other hand, Mumbai lost all five matches in the UAE leg of the tournament, but won their initial two matches in India. However, Mumbai's winning streak was short-lived as the team received a thrashing at the hands of Chennai Super Kings in their last match. Mumbai, in fact, has not been playing up to their reputation.

Therefore, Mumbai coach John Wright, who is familiar with Indian players and the conditions prevailing here by virtue of being a very successful India coach, needs to sit with his boys to sort out things.

This season, performance of the SHR bowlers has been exceptional, and, hence, the focus will be on the likes Dale Steyn, Amit Mishra and Karn Sharma to make the most of the conditions familiar to them. In fact, the addition of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Irfan Pathan to the team this season has made the bowling attack more potent. As far as the batting is concerned, Aaron Finch, skipper Shikhar Dhawan and David Warner require amassing as many runs they can to put the opponents under pressure.

For Mumbai, Rohit Sharma and Kieron Pollard are the biggest match-winners. They have performed reasonably well so far in the tournament, and with the contest for playoff spots becoming intense, it is high time they stand up and deliver without fail. Much depends on Michael Hussey too, but the Australian is not in his best form these days. What MI requires is a player who is able to anchor the innings and then turn on the heat. Hussey may possibly be the answer.

In the bowling department, veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh has done a wonderful job all through the season; he has found the right pace to bowl at, and isn't afraid to flight the ball and is hitting the right spots on a consistent basis. However, the bad news is that pacer Zaheer Khan is out of this IPL 7 owing to injuries.

The match will start at 10.30 a.m. EDT (2.30 p.m. GMT and 8.00 p.m. local time) and can be watched live on GoCricket.com and SkyCricket.net.