Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) captain Pat Cummins has won the toss and elected to bat first against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the IPL 2024 title clash at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Sunday. It’s the third time an IPL final is going to be played between top two teams in the points table.
Two-time champions KKR have beaten 2016 winners SRH twice in this IPL season – once in the league stage and in Qualifier 1 respectively. Sunday’s final is being played on a red-soil pitch,with 63m and 70m square boundaries, along with a straight boundary at 77m. It is the pitch where Punjab Kings beat Chennai Super Kings by seven wickets on May 1.
After winning the toss, Cummins said Shahbaz Ahmed takes Abdul Samad’s place in the playing eleven. “Looks like a good wicket, played on a different wicket the other night. There was no dew on the other night’s game, but when it does, it’s very damaging.”
“We’ve had now dew the other night, I don’t feel there’ll be any today, I want to have a crack with the bat first. We have a style that doesn’t work always, but when it does work, it’s very damaging. We have done well defending scores,” he said.
KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer, leading a side in an IPL final for the second time, said they have bowled first on winning the toss and his playing eleven is unchanged from their Qualifier 1 win over SRH in Ahmedabad earlier this week. KKR have been unbeaten while chasing in IPL 2024.
“We’ll get a fair idea about how the pitch will play. It’s a red soil and we played our last game on a similar surface. We need to stay with the present, stick to the basics and execute all our plans. Every individual is taking responsibility, this is a big game, we’ve plenty of people who’re playing in a final for the first time, nervous, but this is also a good chance,” he said.
Playing XIs:
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wicketkeeper), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (captain), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana and Varun Chakaravarthy
Substitutes: Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, KS Bharat and Sherfane Rutherford
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat and T Natarajan
Substitutes: Umran Malik, Glenn Phillips, Mayank Markande, Abdul Samad and Washington Sundar