Kolkata Knight Riders chose to field v Sunrisers Hyderabad
David Warner was back. Kane Williamson was injured. Bhvuneshwar Kumar was captaining Sunrisers Hyderabad, only his second official match as a captain. The toss, though, was won by home captain Dinesh Karthik, who asked Sunirsers to bat first.
Whike Knight Riders fielded a spin-heave attack, Sunrisers opted for pace to go with Rashid Khan and Shakib Al Hasan, a former Knight Rider. Lockie Ferguson got the nod ahead of Harry Gurney for the hosts.
Jonny Bairstow was going to be Warner’s opening partner, which promised fireworks in earnest. Also in the offing was a contest between two middle-order aspirants for India in the World Cup and also Tamil Nadu team-mates: Karthik and Sunirsers’ Vijay Shankar.
Likely XIs
Kolkata Knight Riders 1 Chris Lynn, 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Shubman Gill, 5 Nitish Rana, 6 Dinesh Karthik (capt. & wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Prasidh Krishna, 11 Lockie Ferguson
Sunrisers Hyderabad 1 David Warner, 2 Jonny Bairstow (wk), 3 Manish Pandey, 4 Deepak Hooda, 5 Shakib Al Hasan, 6 Vijay Shankar, 7 Yusuf Pathan, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar (capt.), 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 Siddarth Kaul