Match details
IPL final: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad
Chennai, May 26
Big picture: Did you think it would be KKR vs SRH?
No one gets to the IPL final without earning it. The league, contested over two months of play-sleep-travel-repeat in the sweltering Indian summer, tests every aspect of a franchise and individual. It examines a team’s culture, bench strength, and ability to plan for diverse conditions and opponents. It tests a player’s skill, fitness and versatility. Sure, luck may have a say every now and then, but it tends to average out over the course of a grueling season. To be the last two standing from a field of ten is quite the achievement already.
So, did you predict this final at the start of IPL 2024?
KKR won their two trophies in 2012 and 2014. SRH in 2016. After their struggles in recent seasons, these two teams have been at the forefront of the batting revolution in IPL 2024, and it is fitting that one of them will add to their tally of titles on Sunday.
Form guide
KKR WWWWW (last five matches, most recent first)
SRH WOWWWW
Previous meetings: KKR 2, SRH 0
Only once before has a team won the IPL final after losing all their previous matches that season against their fellow finalists – when Mumbai Indians beat Rising Pune Supergiant in the 2017 final, after losing both league matches and Qualifier 1 to them. In six other seasons, the team that went into the final 0-2 or 0-3 against their opponents, ended up losing.
Team news and Impact Player strategy
Kolkata Knight Riders
Unless there are any niggles, KKR are likely to play the same combination that beat SRH in Qualifier 1. Nitish Rana and Vaibhav Arora are likely to swap in and out as Impact Players depending on whether they bat or bowl first.
Likely XII: 1 Sunil Narine, 2 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 3 Venkatesh Iyer, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Nitish Rana6 Rinku Singh, 7 Andre Russell, 8 Ramandeep Singh, 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakravarthy, 12 Vaibhav Arora
Sunrisers Hyderabad
SRH’s combination may not be as clear cut. They may not have brought Shahbaz Ahmed in as Impact Player in Qualifier 2 against Rajasthan Royals had they not lost wickets in a hurry. He went on to score 18 and bowl a match-winning spell of 3 for 23 with his left-arm spin. But with as many as four left-hand batters in the KKR line-up – Narine, Venkatesh, Rana and Rinku – SRH might have to come up with an alternative bowling strategy than two left-arm spinners for the final.
There’s also a question around their fourth overseas player. Aiden Markram played Qualifier 2 after missing five games but got out for 1 off 2 balls to continue a poor run of form. When he was on the bench, SRH tried allrounder Marco Jansen and legspinner Vijayakanth Viyaskanth without much success. Is it too late for Glenn Phillips to make an entrance this season?
Likely XII 1 Travis Head 2 Abhishek Sharma 3 Rahul Tripathi 4 Aiden Markram 5 Heinrich Klaasen, 6 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 7 Abdul Samad, 8 Shahbaz Ahmed/Mayank Markande, 9 Pat Cummins, 10 Jaydev Unadkat, 11 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 12 T.Natrajan
In the spotlight: Shreyas Iyer and Pat Cummins
Stats that matter
Pitch and conditions
A sudden shower from around 5.45 pm on the eve of the final forced KKR to cancel their training session. It lasted for more than an hour but the forecast for Sunday is fair: temperature in the 30-35 Celsius with high humidity, and less than 5% chance of rain, according to Accuweather.
“I feel the pitch is completely different from what they played yesterday,” Shreyas said on the eve of the match. “It’s a red-soil [pitch] and yesterday, if I’m not wrong, it was a black-soil wicket. We don’t know how the wicket is going to play tomorrow and also looking at the match from the TV, we felt the dew factor would play a great role, but it didn’t and the ball started spinning”
Quotes
“I think data and analytics is there as a tool to use, but it’s just, you know, it’s one factor in a decision-making process. So, you know, data only takes you so far. So, I think there’s still a strong place for kind of gut feel and intuition.”
Pat Cummins on his captaincy style
“I feel that he has got immense knowledge about how the game is played. He has won two titles previously with KKR and his strategies have been spot-on in terms of what execution we have to make against the opponents.”
Shreyas Iyer on KKR team mentor Gautam Gambhir
George Binoy is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo