BATTLE OF MONEY POWER – SRH vs KKR – IPL 2024

It is an interesting contest tonight between SRH and KKR. In the mini auction in the month of December 2023, both teams paid unheard of prices for two of the world’s best players – KKR for Mitchell Starc and SRH for Pat Cummins.

If KKR reaches the final and Starc plays all the matches, each ball bowled by him would have cost KKR above INR 700,000. Similarly, if SRH reaches the final, the cost per ball, bowled by Cummins would be above INR 500,000. The consolation for SRH is that Cummins can bat as a pinch hitter and adds valuable runs in the lower order.

Another noteworthy addition to KKR lineup is Gautam Gambhir who joins the team this year as Mentor and joins hands with the head coach Chandrakant Pandit. This is significant as KKR won its two IPL title in 2012 and 2014 under the captaincy of Gambhir. He was at the helm of KKR from 2011-2017 and KKR qualified in the playoffs in all the years.

SRH has two star players, Aiden Markram who led them to victory in the South Africa T20 league consecutively over the last two years and Pat Cummins, who helmed Australia in the ODI World Cup victory last year.

Pat Cummins has won the toss and elected to field. Lets see which team comes out at the top.

The lineup of the two teams is as below:

Kolkata Knight Riders: Venkatesh Iyer, Phil Salt* (Wicketkeeper), Shreyas Iyer (Captain), Rinku Singh, Nitish Rana, Sunil Narine*,  Andre Russell*,  Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc*, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram*,  Heinrich Klaasen* (Wicketkeeper), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Marco Jansen, Pat Cummins* (Captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, T Natarajan.

* Overseas Players

 As per the rules, each team can play Four overseas players in a game. Interestingly, both the captains are openers for their teams.