Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) captain Pat Cummins won the toss and chose to bowl against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at Eden Gardens.
In an early indication that spin could be a factor tonight, KKR made one change: Moeen Ali replaced Spencer Johnson. Moeen took 2 for 23 on a spinning surface in Guwahati in his only IPL 2025 appearance. For SRH, Sri Lanka's Kamindu Mendis made his IPL debut, replacing Wiaan Mulder in the bowl-first XI while Travis Head was on the Impact Player bench.
Cummins said SRH were outplayed by KKR in last season's final and he wanted to change that. He also said the team spoke "a bit" about their batting issues in their previous two games but feels they are at their best when aggressive. He said the boys are not worried too much about it.
Ajinkya Rahane said he was "really happy" with the pitch, and wanted to bowl first too. He said he hoped it would suit his spinners and will need to assess conditions quickly.
SRH's decision to bowl was interesting, since they have been a team who like to post a big total and then attempt to defend it.
Both KKR and SRH have only one win from their first three games, with both those wins coming against Rajasthan Royals.
KKR bat-first XI: 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Venkatesh Iyer, 3 Ajinkya Rahane (capt), 4 Rinku Singh, 5 Angkrish Raghuvanshi, 6 Moeen Ali, 7 Sunil Narine, 8 Andre Russell, 9 Ramandeep Singh, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakravarthy
SRH bowl-first XI: 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Ishan Kishan, 3 Nitish Reddy, 4 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 5 Aniket Verma, 6 Kamindu Mendis, 7 Simarjeet Singh, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Harshal Patel, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Zeeshan Ansari