AGENCY
NEW DELHI, Mar 30
Pat Cummins called it right at the toss and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) opted to bat first in the day game against Delhi Capitals (DC) in Vishakhapatnam. It was the first time in IPL 2025 that the captain winning the toss chose to bat.
KL Rahul will be playing his first match in IPL 2025 after he missed DC’s opening encounter for the birth of his daughter. Sameer Rizvi made way for Rahul’s return in what was the only change for the home team. Cummins backed his batters to continue with their trend from last season – bat first, put up a big score and defend it successfully. With the sun baking down and expected to slow the pitch as the game goes on, SRH opted to bring in an extra spinner for a fast bowler. As a result, legspinner Zeeshan Ansari, who plays for Uttar Pradesh in the domestic circuit, came in for fast bowler Simarjeet Singh.
Axar Patel said that he would also have batted first, given “ball does more in the second innings”. He backed his bowlers to be brave and resort to death bowling right from the start if need be.
The square boundaries were 66m and 60m in Vishakhapatnam, with the straight hit being 73m. WV Raman, at the pitch report, said that spin could come into play as the game goes on because of the sun baking down.
Sunrisers Hyderabad XI: 1 Travis Head, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Ishan Kishan, 4 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 5 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 6 Aniket Verma, 7 Abhinav Manohar, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Harshal Patel, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Zeeshan Ansari
Impact Player options: Sachin Baby, Eshan Malinga, Simarjeet Singh, Adam Zampa, Wiaan Mulder
Delhi Capitals XI: 1 Faf du Plessis, 2 Jake Fraser-McGurk, 3 Abishek Porel, 4 KL Rahul (wk), 5 Axar Patel (capt), 6 Tristan Stubbs, 7 Vipraj Nigam, 8 Mitchell Starc, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Mohit Sharma, 11 Mukesh Kumar Impact Player options: Karun Nair, Ashutosh Sharma, Sameer Rizvi, Donovan Ferreira, Tripurna Vijay.
