The table-toppers Kolkata Knight Riders will lock horns against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the first qualifier at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Tuesday. When these two teams met earlier in the season, KKR had won by four runs after Andre Russell came up with an all-around performance, scoring 25-ball 64 and taking two wickets.
We take a look at the head-to-head battle, players to watch out for, and squads of both teams in our match preview.
Kolkata Knight Riders: NR NR W W W
KKR has been the best team of the tournament so far and they would want to carry a good show against the Orange Army. It will be a battle between two batting powerhouses and thus the onus will be on the bowlers to keep the opposition at bay. But KKR will definitely miss the services of Phil Salt.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: W NR W L W
Sunrisers Hyderabad’s opening pair of Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma have played a key hand in their team’s success. The pugnacious left-handed duo has taken the opposition batters to the cleaners and they are going to hold the key.
Head to Head: Matches: 26, Won by KKR: 17, Won by SRH:9.
KKR certainly holds the advantage against SRH in H2H.
Players to watch out for: Shreyas Iyer, Rinku Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakravarthy, and Sunil Narine will hold the key for KKR.
Pat Cummins, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar,, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram, and Travis Head will be the crucial players for SRH.
SRH IPL 2024 FULL SQUAD
Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Pat Cummins ©, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan.
KKR Squad: Shreyas Iyer, Phil Salt, K.S. Bharat, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (AFG), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford (WI), Manish Pandey, Andre Russell (WI), Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine (WI), Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc (AUS), Dushmantha Chameera (SL), Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman (AFG).
