Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will be up against the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the first qualifier of the 2024 edition of the IPL. For the longest time during the season, this fixture looked impossible with the way Rajasthan Royals were dominating the league stage at one point. But as luck would have it, the Royals started losing and it all began with a 1-run loss against SRH. SRH won their final game to end up with 17 points, which is equal to the Royals but the latter have an inferior net run rate.
In several aspects, it's a battle of equals. Similar built teams, on intent and going from the outset with an approach of taking the bull by its horns, However, KKR will be slightly undercooked with their last game being on May 11. Since then, they have had a couple of called off games and have lost their opening batter Phil Salt, who has returned home for international duty, which means Rahmanullah Gurbaz will be playing his first game of the season directly in the playoffs.
SRH have a chance to peg the Knight Riders early, but the Men in Purple have a better and an all-round bowling attack and in the battle of destructive batting line-ups, the team that bowls well might ultimately come out on the top. Sunrisers might want to bring an extra bowler into the XI as Nitish Reddy and Shahbaz Ahmed as fifth and sixth bowling options might be a stretch, given it's sort of a semi-final and against a bulldozing line-up of that of KKR.
My Dream11 team for IPL Qualifier 1, KKR vs SRH
Travis Head (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sunil Narine (vc), Shreyas Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Ramandeep Singh, T Natarajan, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar
Probable Playing XIIs
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi/Jaydev Unadkat, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Shahbaz Ahmed, Abdul Samad, Sanvir Singh, Pat Cummins, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Vijaykanth Viyaskanth
