Kolkata Knight Riders will host Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 2 at the iconic Eden Gardens. Since both teams suffered a defeat in their opening game, the clash holds extreme importance as back-to-back defeats will hurt either of the teams. The Knights went down to Mumbai in their opening game, while Bengaluru picked up a comfortable win against Hyderabad on the opening day.
As things stand, neither teams are expected to make major changes to their XI. Head coach Abhishek Nayar has confirmed that Cameron Green is not yet ready to bowl, which is a slight concern for the team but the Ajinkya Rahane-led side has plenty of options. Nevertheless, their success heavily depends on how the batters fare at the top of the order and also on the form of Varun Chakravarthy, who has been struggling in recent days.
Hyderabad, on the other hand, will be without their captain Pat Cummins once again. Ishan Kishan will fill in the role. Like KKR, they too would hope for the batting unit to step up big time. There were plenty of expectations from the opening duo of Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head, but they failed to live up to the expectations. Kishan too struggled. Nitish Kumar Reddy, in the meantime, needs to prove his mettle in the shortest format of the game to be in the reckoning. Notably, bowling is their biggest weakness and they need to work tremendously hard in that department.
Eden Gardens, Kolkata, Pitch Report
The surface at Eden Gardens will heavily support the batters. It’s a high-scoring venue and it will stay true to that. Bowling first will be ideal and no total is really safe. However, the team batting first will definitely try to keep it over 230 runs to give themselves a healthy chance. Notably, Kolkata versus Hyderabad will be played on the safe surface that the T20 World Cup 2026 semi-final was played between New Zealand and South Africa. In that match, Finn Allen smacked a 33-ball century.
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