Last December, when Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins went for over ₹45 crore collectively at the auction, it looked like the Indian Premier League market had gone berserk.
Recency bias was the oft-cited explanation, for the two speedsters had played an instrumental role in Australia’s 50-over World Cup win just a month earlier. It didn’t matter that Starc had last played in the IPL in 2015 and Cummins a grand total of 12 IPL matches since 2020.
Kolkata Knight Riders paid a whopping ₹24.75 crores for Starc and Sunrisers Hyderabad splurged ₹20.50 crores on Cummins. Two bonafide Test greats, with enviable ODI records, had laughed their way to the bank in the bespoke world of T20 cricket.
Sunrisers Hyderabad’s captain Pat Cummins will be aiming to win the second title while Kolkata Knight Riders counterpart Shreyas Iyer aims to lift the third title. | Photo Credit: PTI/ANI
More than five months after that frenzied afternoon in Dubai, Starc and Cummins will line up for the IPL final at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on May 26, having proved their penny’s worth and every critic wrong. Starc has scalped 15 wickets in KKR’s commanding run to the summit clash while Cummins, with his midas captaincy touch, has had his best-ever IPL with 17 wickets.
It helps that both are part of robust T20 outfits. KKR, astutely led by Shreyas Iyer, last lost a match exactly a month ago and reserved its best for Qualifier 1 where it walloped SRH by eight wickets. Sunrisers, despite being not so clinical, has redefined T20 batting this season, with Travis Head — another World Cup winner from Australia — and Abhishek Sharma pummelling many attacks into submission.
So wholesome an outfit has KKR been that even the loss of the in-form opener Phil Salt hasn’t seemingly affected the balance as Afghan Rahmanullah Gurbaz shone in Qualifier 1 in his first visit to the crease. Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer and Andre Russell have come to the party when required; only Rinku Singh has remained largely subdued.
For SRH, Rahul Tripathi has thrived in three straight games and, along with Heinrich Klaasen, has bolstered the middle-order. Particularly impressive was the way R. Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal were handled in Qualifier 2. This should bode well for the team ahead of another spin test against Varun Chakravarthy and Narine.
New heroes
The biggest gain for SRH from Friday’s shootout was the unearthing of new heroes, with the unheralded spin bowlers in Shahbaz Ahmed and Abhishek coming up with match-winning performances on a dry, deteriorating pitch. Will lightning strike twice at Chepauk?
Heavens did open on match-eve, forcing KKR to call off its practice session after a few minutes. Sun didn’t beat down on Saturday as it usually does in May in these parts, but the weather remained warm and humid. As to what effect this has on the late-evening dew on matchday remains to be seen, for the absence of it in Qualifier 2 perplexed many.
However, amidst this mystery, what is certain is the fact that one of Starc and Cummins will leave the Indian shores with another colourful feather in an already ornate cap. A World Test champion, an ODI World Cup winner, a T20 World titlist will also be an IPL top dog.
Teams
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Aiden Markram, Abdul Samad, Nitish Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan, Mayank Markande, Umran Malik, Anmolpreet Singh, Glenn Phillips (wk), Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Upendra Yadav (wk), Jhathavedh Subramanyan, Sanvir Singh, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Akash Maharaj Singh, Mayank Agarwal.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain and Mujeeb Ur Rahman.
Match starts at 7.30 PM.
