IPL-2024: Kolkata Knight Riders to face Sunrisers Hyderabad in Kolkata: SRH hopes on Cummins
In IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders will face Sunrisers Hyderabad in the third match today evening at Eden Garden in Kolkata. The match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad will start at 7.30 PM in Kolkata. SRH is hoping on Cummins to excel in the matches
Having qualified for the playoffs in six of their first eight seasons including a title and a runners-up finish, things have gone downhill for Sunrisers Hyderabad over the last three years. Two wooden-spoon finishes during this phase has meant wholesale changes, forcing the management to go big on a leader to get the team forward.
Pat Cummins, who led Australia to the ODI World Cup title and the World Test Championship trophy, was bought at an astronomical price at the auction and has recently been named captain. Travis Head and Wanindu Hasaranga were the other star signings but all eyes will be on whether Cummins can change the franchise’s fortunes.No side has bowled fewer overs of spin as SRH across IPL 2022 and 2023.
They are at the bottom of the table across all parameters with respect to spin bowling – overs bowled (163.5), wickets taken (38), average (36.82) and SR (25.9) while their ER of 8.54 is just marginally better than RCB’s 8.72. The addition of Hasaranga and availability of Washington Sundar should help in remedying this.
The Australian captain will be under the spotlight not just for his captaincy but also under scrutiny as a player, given that he will be taking up one of the four overseas spots in the XI. Cummins will have to spearhead SRH’s pace attack and also provide buffer as a lower order batter to deepen the batting
SRH are blessed to have no headaches with regards to fitness of their players. However, Hasaranga only recently returned to competitive cricket after a lengthy layoff due to injury while Sundar’s fitness has always been volatile. That said, as things stand, the SRH squad technically have no injury concerns.
Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Philip Salt(w), Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer(c), Nitish Rana, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Sunil Narine, Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Manish Pandey, Srikar Bharat, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Anukul Roy, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Chetan Sakariya, Sherfane Rutherford, Vaibhav Arora, Dushmantha Chameera, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sakib Hussain, Suyash Sharma
Sunrisers Hyderabad Squad: Mayank Agarwal, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Washington Sundar, Abdul Samad, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik, Rahul Tripathi, Glenn Phillips, Jaydev Unadkat, Anmolpreet Singh, Upendra Yadav, Mayank Markande, Jhatavedh Subramanyan, Sanvir Singh, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Shahbaz Ahmed, Akash Maharaj Singh, Nitish Reddy
