KKR vs SRH IPL Live score 2024, Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad:
KKR vs SRH IPL Live score 2024, Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad: Here we go. Time for the second match of Saturday’s double header, featuring the former champions Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad. Barring the Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings, only three teams have won the IPL, two of whom promise to light up the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Home team KKR are the second-most successful IPL team of all time having won the championship back in 2012 and 2014, but ever since, have struggled for consistency. Only once in the last 10 seasons have KKR reached the final of the IPL, most recently back in 2021. The last two years, KKR have failed to qualify for the Playoffs, so yeah, things haven’t been the brightest for the two-time IPL champions.…Read More
But this year, a couple of pre-tournament shake-ups bode well for the franchise. First and foremost, Gautam Gambhir is back with his former team. Yes. Having quit his political career and after serving two stints as the mentor of Lucknow Super Giants, Gambhir is back to the team that made him an IPL superstar. Under him, KKR won the IPL, defeating CSK and PBKS – former Kings XI Punjab – in two separate finals, and with him back, the belief in the camp is that KKR will be able to discover their days of dominance. It’s the team with the longest winning streak of 10 matches. If they are able to replicate it this time around, there’s no force that can stop them.
Secondly, Shreyas Iyer is back as captain. After missing the last season due to a back injury, which paved the way for Nitish Rana to take charge, Shreyas will take the top position. He will be under a whole lot of scrutiny, coming off the Ranji vs IPL saga, but a fit-again Iyer showed his body is ready, following another injury setback, for the rigours of the T20 league when he creamed a solid 95 for Mumbai in the final of the Ranji Trophy. But hey, Ranji and the IPL are two different territories altogether. As AB de Villiers mentioned, one is classical music, while the other is rock. But there’ve been very few who have aced both and Shreyas possesses all skills that’s required to do it. Oh and wait, how can be forget Mitchell Starc, the costliest buy in IPL history.
His counterpart is an individual he and the whole of India is familiar with. Pat Cummins. IPL’s second costliest buy of all time. Australia’s World Test Championship winning captain. A World Cup winner and the breaker of Indian hearts. Too early? Our bad. But no amount of brushing under the carpet can hide what Cummins has achieved in the last one year. With all that heavy resume, it was evident that the moment SRH spent ₹20.50 crore on him, he will be their captain, irrespective of how his T20 record has been. As Cummins took over from the helm Aiden Markram, not everyone took it well. Markram, after all, has led SRH’s sister franchise the Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the SA20 title last month, while Cummins is yet to prove his mettle as a T20 captain. But when you’re coming off a year quite like Cummins, everything you touch tends to turn to gold. And that’s exactly the philosophy SRH have stuck by.
Besides, Cummins has a solid looking team under him. The addition of Glenn Phillips and Travis Head gives their batting that strength, and allrounders Washington Sundar and Marco Jansen are invaluable in T20s. Heinrich Klaasen in the lower middle order can play the perfect finisher and is coming off an uber-successful SA20 form, and to handle the pace department, the Jammu Express Umran Malik, veteran India seamers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jaydev Unadkat provide the perfect blend of youth and experience. This is a very different-looking SRH team from the past, and makes for an exciting line-up. They may just pull in a surprise. It has been a while since they won the IPL. Eight years to be precise, when David Warner took them to the top. So yeah, like KKR, SRH too are desperate to shed the baggage and break free.
