Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) return to their home venue for the first time since the tournament opener to take on the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in a repeat of last year's final.

It's not often that the talks and conversations about pitch and how the surface will play, or assist the home team cloud the build-up of the game but such has been the post-Chandrakant Pandit outburst effect that the pitch has been in focus, so much so that others teams including Chennai Super Kings and Lucknow Super Giants have started speaking about it.

The result? Kolkata pitch looked as dry as it has in the last two years, with all the grass shaved off and watered and dried so much that it ought to take some turn on Thursday evening. It may not be a bald surface where the spinners are ruling the roost, however, the slower bowlers are expected to be in the game a little more than what the surface has been in the last few years.

Kolkata Knight Riders are expected to bring in Moeen Ali, who gives the home side a spin option while increasing the batting depth and Sunrisers Hyderabad could pair up Zeeshan Ansari with Adam Zampa, looking at the surface or have someone like Jaydev Unadkat bowling at the death. Sunrisers are coming off two consecutive losses and hence, will be baying for blood and the Knight Riders too would want to stamp their authority in familiar conditions.

My Dream11 team for IPL 2025 Match 15, KKR vs SRH

Quinton de Kock, Sunil Narine, Ishan Kishan, Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Aniket Verma, Varun Chakravarthy, Zeeshan Ansari, Pat Cummins (vc), Moeen Ali

Probable Playing XIIs

Kolkata Knight Riders​: Sunil Narine, Quinton de Kock (wk), Ajinkya Rahane, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Moeen Ali, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Vaibhav Arora

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Ishan Kishan, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Aniket Verma, Abhinav Manohar, Pat Cummins, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Shami, Zeeshan Ansari, Wiaan Mulder/Adam Zampa