IPL 2025, KKR vs SRH preview: Can Sunrisers Hyderabad's explosive batting unit outclass Kolkata Knight Riders?
Kolkata Knight Riders face Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL 2025 at Eden Gardens.
FollowKolkata Knight Riders to take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 15th match of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 at the Eden Gardens Stadium in Kolkata on Thursday, March 3.
Kolkata Knight Riders, on the other hand, did not have an ideal start to their season as the defending champions, losing their opening match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru at home. However, Ajinkya Rahane-led side bounced back with a win against Rajasthan Royals before registering 2nd defeat of the season against Mumbai Indians.
Sunrisers Hyderabad were off to a great start to their season with a 44-run win over Rajasthan Royals in their opening match at home. The Orange Army registered the second-highest total in the history of IPL, 286/6. However, Sunrisers failed to maintain winning momentum as they suffered two consecutive defeats against Delhi Capitals and Lucknow Super Giants. In these two matches, Hyderabad failed to score 200 or more runs in an innings.
IPL 2025, KKR vs SRH preview: Sunrisers Hyderabad’s strength lies in batting
Sunrisers Hyderabad have the most formidable batting line-up with the likes of Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, and Nitish Kumar Reddy. In the last two matches, Sunrisers’ batting unit was less impactful as Abhishek, Head, and Ishan dismissed cheaply, while Klaasen and Nitish were only the batters who delivered their best.
In the last match against Delhi Capitals, Sunrisers Hyderabad unearthed new talent, Aniket Verma, who played a brilliant knock of 74 off 41 balls to help the team post a total of 163 on the board. However, his effort went in vain as DC chased down a 164-run target in 16 overs. With Verma’s firepower in the middle-order has further strengthened SRH’s batting depth, giving an additional option to accelerate in the middle-order. However, SRH will need their top order batters to fire collectively in order to put up a challenging total against Kolkata Knight Riders’ bowling attack.
Sunrisers Hyderabad’s bowling unit has been quite mediocre as they could not bundle out any of the teams in the last three matches, despite having Mohammed Shami and Pat Cummins in the team. The bowling unit will need to step up to complement their explosive batting line-up if they want to outclass KKR.
IPL 2025, KKR vs SRH preview: Kolkata Knight Riders to overcome batting woes
In their last match against Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders suffered a collapse in their batting line-up, losing four wickets in powerplay. They were bundled out for 116 runs, with Angkrish Raghuvanshi (26) and Ramandeep Singh (22) only scoring more than 20 runs. Skipper Ajinkya Rahane admitted it was a failure of collective batting effort.
KKR will need their experienced batters like Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane, Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, and Quinton de Kock in order to deliver and step up if they want to overcome batting woes to pose a serious challenge to Sunrisers Hyderabad. If they repeat a similar performance from their last match, it could prove costly against Sunrisers Hyderabad’s explosive batting lineup.
Kolkata Knight Riders’ bowling attack has not been quite impressive, with Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, and Harshit Rana yet to make an impact despite they were retained as core players ahead of the IPL 2025. KKR’s bowling unit will have to put their best foot forward in order to challenge SRH’s batting line-up.
IPL 2025, KKR vs SRH preview: Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad squads
Kolkata Knight Riders: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Rinku Singh, Quinton de Kock (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Luvnith Sisodia, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Moeen Ali, Ramandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Anrich Nortje, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande, Spencer Johnson, Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and Chetan Sakariya.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Pat Cummins (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Atharva Taide, Abhinav Manohar, Aniket Verma, Sachin Baby, Heinrich Klaasen, Travis Head, Harshal Patel, Kamindu Mendis, Wiaan Mulder, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Shami, Rahul Chahar, Adam Zampa, Simarjeet Singh, Zeeshan Ansari, Jaydev Unadkat and Eshan Malinga.
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