Ahmedabad, May 21: Since both sides bat aggressively and bat deep, so the side winning the toss in a crunch game opting to bat first was not unexpected.
Winning the toss, SRH skipper Pat Cummins asked Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to field first in the Qualifier 1 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the Narendra Modi Stadium here on Tuesday.
The winner of the encounter will directly qualify for the title clash while the loser will get another chance to play the final. SRH are playing with the same team in the high-pressure 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.
On the other hand, KKR have replaced Phil Salt with Rahmanullah Gurbaz.
KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer said, "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 (finishing 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."
Squads:
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, T. Natarajan.
Impact Substitutes: Sanvir Singh, Umran Malik, Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar, Jaydev Unadkat.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy.
Impact Substitutes: Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, KS Bharat, Sherfaine Rutherford.
Considering current form and team combinations, experts and fans my back SRH to dominate in the Ahmedabad surface, but actually there is nothing between the two sides to choose. On a given day, ether side can dominate the other. (With IANS support)
