Kamal Ghorui
Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and elected to bat first against Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL 2026 clash at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad. Captain Pat Cummins backing his side’s aggressive approach on what appears to be a good batting surface.We’ll bat first. Pitch looks good and it’s very hot, we’ll bat and post a total. I’m not good at reading the pitches, it looks nice and must be high scoring. I think the thing is the young guys have come in and been fantastic. A lot of the stalwarts as well have really hit their stride, I think we’ve got over 220 all but one game. So it just feels like everyone’s, you know, found their rhythm, built themselves in the tournament, playing that style that we want, which is really positive and everyone’s bought into that. (on their winning run) I think that’s just the thing. It’s very unlikely we’re going to win every single game for the rest of the season, but we know this style works and we’re five in a row at the moment. So even if there’s a little glitch, just keep buying for that style. Nitish misses out. He’s got a bit of illness, Smaran comes in for his first game and Harshal Patel replaces Harsh Dubey,” Cummins said at the toss. Sunrisers Hyderabad made a couple of changes, with debutant Smaran Ravichandran coming in for the unwell Nitish, while Harshal Patel replaces Harsh Dubey.On the other side, Ajinkya Rahane revealed that Kolkata Knight Riders would have preferred to bat first as well. However, he remained confident after a short break, saying the team had used the time to reflect and improve.”We wanted to bat first as well. Those breaks so far, it really helped us as a team, re-coupling and thinking about the things which we did right and the improvement point of view. As I said in the last game as well, it’s all about winning those moments, small, small moments in this format. Game can change here and there within an over. It’s all about being present, being slightly proactive and also winning those moments. I thought hose breaks, so far, definitely helped. We’ve got two changes. Finn Allen is back in place of Seifert and then Manish Pandey is playing his first game of this season in place of Ramandeep Singh,” Rahane said. KKR also made two changes, with Finn Allen coming in for Tim Seifert, while Manish Pandey returns to the XI in place of Ramandeep Singh.
Playing XIs and Impact subs
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Ajinkya Rahane(c), Angkrish Raghuvanshi(w), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi, Varun ChakaravarthySunrisers Hyderabad (Playing XI): Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Ishan Kishan(w), Heinrich Klaasen, Salil Arora, Aniket Verma, Smaran Ravichandran, Pat Cummins(c), Shivang Kumar, Harshal Patel, Eshan MalingaKolkata Knight Riders Impact subs: Finn Allen, Ramandeep Singh, Tejasvi Dahiya, Navdeep Saini, Tim SeifertSunrisers Hyderabad Impact subs: Praful Hinge, Harsh Dubey, Liam Livingstone, Sakib Hussain, Zeeshan Ansari
