Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) captain Pat Cummins won the toss and opted to bowl against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in an IPL 2025 match at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens on Thursday evening (April 3).

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This is a repeat of last year’s final, which KKR won in Chennai.

Head to be Impact player

In a surprise move, SRH have not named Travis Head in their Playing XI and is part of the Impact Players list. Sri Lankan all-rounder Kamindu Mendis is making his IPL debut for SRH. Hyderabad are likely to open with Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan.

For KKR, Moeen Ali has come in for Spencer Johnson.

After winning the toss, Cummins said, “We will bowl. Looks like a good surface, but I’m terrible at reading it. They outplayed us in the final, but a bit of change in both sides. We’ve spoken about our batting, we’ve been at our best while being aggressive, but we can’t be reckless.”

A win apiece

“Looks good, I’m really happy with the pitch, we were also bowling first. It will suit our spinners, at home, you should get what you want, but we’ll need to assess the situation quickly with the bat. We sat together and discussed how we can get better, but this is a long tournament and it was one bad day. Moeen Ali comes in place of Spencer Johnson. Regardless of all plans, we’ll have to come out and do well in the middle,” KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane said at the toss.

Before the start of the match, KKR’s Rinku Singh was presented with a special jersey as he is playing his 50th match for the franchise.

So far in IPL 2025, both KKR and SRH have won one match each and lost two apiece.

Playing XIs

KKR: Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Moeen Ali, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy.

Impact Players: Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Anukul Roy, Rovman Powell, Luvnith Sisodia.

SRH: Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Aniket Verma, Kamindu Mendis, Pat Cummins (captain), Simarjeet Singh, Harshal Patel, Mohammed Shami, Zeeshan Ansari.

Impact Players: Abhinav Manohar, Jaydev Unadkat, Travis Head, Rahul Chahar, Wiaan Mulder.