Mitchell Starc makes his sensational return to IPL after nine years of gap as Kolkata Knight Riders bat first against Sunrisers Hyderabad after losing the toss at Eden Gardens on Saturday.
Pat Cummins won the toss for SRH and elected to bowl first with new signing Travis Head missing the playing eleven. Apart from Cummins, the former captain Aiden Markram, South African players Heinrich Klaasen and Marco Jansen occupied four overseas slots.
The Sunrisers also start without a star bowling all-rounder Washington Sundar and included new signings Shahbaz Ahmed and Mayank Markande to fill the spin attack. Umran Malik also fails to find a place in the playing eleven after a disastrous season in 2023 as SRH started with Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan.
"We gonna have a bowl, wicket looks pretty good," Cummins said after winning the toss. "Jansen, Klaasen and Markram are the other three. This is my first game for Sunrisers, it's been awesome in the camp to the lead-up and the confidence is really high in the group."
Phil Salt, an injury replacement for Jason Roy, opened an innings with Sunil Narine ahead of wicketkeeper batter Rahmanullah Gurbaz. Manish Pandey failed to find a place in the packed middle order as Shreyas, Nitish Rana, and Rinku Singh occupy batting slots.
"Feel fantastic (talking about his recovery from back injury)," Shreyas Iyer said "I have been training well and played a few games as well. The spinners have been bowling tremendously over the past few seasons and all of them are lethal in their own way. I see a bit of dryness on this wicket and hopefully it will help them. Salt, Narine, Russell and Starc are playing today."
Sunrisers Hyderabad Playing XI: Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Marco Jansen, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, T Natarajan
Kolkata Knight Riders Playing XI: Philip Salt (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
SRH impact players: Nitish Reddy, Washington Sundar, Umran Malik, Glenn Phillips, Abhishek Sharma.
KKR impact players: Suyash Sharma, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rahmanullah Gurbaz.
