KKR secured their spot in the final by finishing at the top of the points table during the league stage and defeating SRH in the first qualifier. SRH earned their place in the final by winning against Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the second qualifier.
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In an interview with JioCinema, Kumble commended KKR’s all-round performance throughout the tournament, highlighting their strength in both batting and bowling.
“KKR has been the all-round team, with the ball or with the bat. You name it, you have the players with Rinku Singh yet to chip in. When you have a side with explosive batters, a bowler like Starc who is coming into his form, we saw his impact in the last game and Shreyas Iyer,” said the former Indian team head coach.
He also praised the leadership of KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer, stating, “Even he has done exceptionally well as a captain, he has been calm and used his resources well. He got the best out of Russel and they have the firepower with both the bat and ball.”
Kumble emphasized that both KKR and SRH have redefined the approach to playing in the powerplay overs. He noted, “Both these teams have redefined how to go about in the powerplay, and we saw that. This is a surface that requires you to utilize the powerplay and we saw how SRH did that. Two teams that have done well throughout the tournament dictated the terms right from ball one consistently and no wonder they are playing the finals in Chennai on Sunday.”
Sunrisers Hyderabad Squad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (Wk), Abdul Samad, Pat Cummins (C), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Jaydev Unadkat, Shahbaz Ahmed, Umran Malik, Sanvir Singh, Glenn Phillips, Mayank Markande, Mayank Agarwal, Washington Sundar, Anmolpreet Singh, Upendra Yadav, Jhatavedh Subramanyan, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Akash Maharaj Singh.
Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (Wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (C), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, Srikar Bharat, Sherfane Rutherford, Dushmantha Chameera, Chetan Sakariya, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sakib Hussain, Suyash Sharma, Allah Ghazanfar.
(Inputs from ANI)
