Mitchell Starc produced a brilliant delivery to clean bowl Abhishek Sharma in the first over of the IPL 2024 final between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday. Starc has been in the news throughout the competition after he became the costliest player in the history of the IPL as KKR bought him for a mammoth sum of Rs 24.75 Crore. However, he bounced back brilliantly from his disappointing start and produced a ripper to send Abhishek Sharma packing. The delivery pitched on the leg-stump line before nipping away sharply and it ultimately crashed into the off-stump to leave Abhishek stunned.
Meanwhile, SRH captain Pat Cummins won the toss and opted to bat against KKR.
"We will bat first. Looks like a good wicket, played on a different wicket the other night. There was no dew on the other night's game, we have a style which doesn't work always, but when it does, it's very damaging. I want to crack with the bat first. We have done well defending scores. Pretty much the same, Shahbaz comes in for Samad," Cummins said at the toss.
KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer said that they wanted to field first if they won the toss.
"We would have bowled, we'll get a fair idea about how the pitch will play. It's a red soil and we played our last game on a similar surface. We need to stay with the present, stick to the basics and execute all our plans. Every individual is taking responsibility, this is a big game, we've plenty of people who're playing in a final for the first time, nervous, but this is also a good chance. We're going with the same team."
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan