Anyway, enough of such high jinks. The KKR openers are on their way out – and it’s Sunil Narine pushed up alongside Phil Salt to start off! Looks like Bhuvneshwar Kumar with the new ball for SRH. Salt is taking strike. Slip in place
Hello, IPL peeps. I like orange, I like purple, but which one’s best…? Only one way to find out. FIGHT!
7.23pm We are only ten minutes away from the action, and here comes Alan wearing a mix of orange and purple. Whom is he rooting for tonight? Only he can answer.
Ask Star on ESPNcricinfo: Got a question for the Star Sports commentators about this match? Want to ask Navjot Sidhu, Ambati Rayudu or Irfan Pathan about anything cricket? Go to the ESPNcricinfo homepage on the mobile site, click on the Ask Star button at the bottom of the screen, and send in your questions. They could get answered on TV.
“SRH might have the best overseas contingent by far. Head, Hasaranga and Phillips are great players, and it’s a shame we’re capped at four!” — Life is only that much bit fair, Rishy
Ashish: “No GP!! Won’t watch this match without him”
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Venkatesh Iyer, 2 Phil Salt (wk), 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Rinku Singh, 5 Nitish Rana, 6 Sunil Narine, 7 Andre Russell, 8 Ramandeep Singh, 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakravarthy. The impact-sub options are Suyash, Pandey, Arora, Raghuvanshi and Gurbaz.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 Rahul Tripathi, 3 Aiden Markram, 4 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 5 Abdul Samad, 6 Shahbaz Ahmed, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Mayank Markande, 11 T Natarajan. The impact-sub options are Reddy, Washington, Malik, Phillips and Abhishek.
7pm It is windy at Eden, as we get set for the toss. SRH win the toss and bowl first. Pat Cummins says T20 “is pretty quick”, and so he’ll have to think on his feet when it comes to captaincy in this format. His other three overseas players are Markram, Klassen and Jansen. Meanwhile, home captain Shreyas Iyer is greeted by a roar, and says his back “feels fantastic”. He refers to the team sheet, and says his overseas quartet is Salt, Narine, Russell and Starc.
6.45pm Steven Smith – yes, him! – who is one of the experts at ESPNcricinfo for this IPL, gets his prediction meter ticking. He forecasts Starc’s wicket tally, IPL 2024’s MVP and much more. And if you’re wondering what made Smith guess that number for Starc, here’s Sid Monga’s analysis on the constant and universal appeal of Starc.
There are some subplots which will be taking shape at Eden Gardens tonight, with Shreyas Iyer’s return, and Cummins vs Starc being two of them, as Hemant Brar’s preview reminds us. As for the two most expensive buys in IPL history, Cummins, who is Starc’s captain at Australia, says it will be “weird seeing him in the other dugout”.
6.30pm They come very rapidly in the IPL – like sharp, rising waves in the sea. Only last night we were in Chennai, the southern part of the country; and even before the action in Mullanpur, the northern corner, is wrapped, we are all but readying ourselves for a game in Kolkata in the east. This is Himanshu saying hello ahead of the third game this season, with Alan, who is busy munching lunch, set to join me soon.