Kolkata Knight Riders are taking on Sunrisers Hyderabad in Qualifier 1 of the Indian Premier League 2024. The two teams are looking to make a direct entry into the playoffs as they aim to continue their strong run going into the tournament.
SRH opted to bat first and apart from the toss, nothing worked in favour of the 2016 champions as Mitchell Starc ripped their top-order apart. While he was busy doing his work, the ball-by-ball graphic in the overs column showed trees for every dot ball being delivered by the bowlers.
The tree symbols for every dot ball represent the initiative of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Tata Group. The two have come together and have promised to plant 500 trees for every dot ball in the three IPL playoffs and final.
SRH won the toss and opted to bat first at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Pat Cummins expected the pitch will help for a high-scoring game. "We gonna have a bat, looks like a good wicket and expect a high-scoring game. The batting group has been amazing for us and hopefully more of the same tonight. We are playing pretty much the same eleven as the last game," Cummins said at the toss.
Meanwhile, KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer wanted to bowl first anyhow and got what he wanted. "I would have loved to bowl. I had a chat with the curator and he said it's a mixed soil, let's see how it plays, hoping for a good game. Important that we keep the momentum going and stay in the present. Great achievement (finising at the top of the table) and everyone is proud of it, we are taking one match at a time and we need to be positive about what's going to happen here. We are going with the same team," Iyer said at the toss.
KKR and SRH's Playing XIs:
KKR's Playing XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
SRH's Playing XI: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, T Natarajan
