In 2023, Cummins led Australia to the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup, realizing his dream year. However, he is in his first T20 cricket captaincy role, and managing an IPL squad is very different from managing a national team. Furthermore, although bowler Cummins is already destined for glory in Test cricket match, same cannot be said of him in Twenty20.
Daniel Vettori is the new coach of the SRH. This marks the fourth season in a row that they have had a new coach and captain. Once one of the most reliable IPL teams, SRH has spent the last three seasons finishing twice at the bottom and once at No. 8 out of ten teams. Can Vettori and Cummins turn things around ?
As the only other elite seamer on the team, Mitchell Starc will need to step up his role for KKR. Shreyas Iyer, who skipped the 2023 season, is back leading KKR. His recent absence from the pitch over the final two days of the Ranji Trophy match due to back spasms raised some doubts about his fitness. He did, however, participate in KKR’s intrasquad practise earlier this week, thus he is eligible to play on Saturday. However, due to a quadriceps injury sustained during the first ODI against Afghanistan, Dushmantha Chameera is probably going to miss the first few games.
It is not possible to use Wanindu Hasaranga for the first game at least. His situation is a little murky because, although he is part of Sri Lanka’s Test team in Bangladesh, he is unable to participate in those matches due to an ICC suspension. His absence sort of reduces Cummins’s burden in selecting four foreign players.
Venue : Eden Gardens, Kolkata
KKR Possible XI : Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Sunil Narine, Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
SRH Possible XI : Mayank Agarwal, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen(wk), Washington Sundar, Abdul Samad, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik
