The Indian Premier League heads back to Eden Gardens on Thursday as the IPL 2025 season continues when the defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders host the Sunrisers Hyderabad in a repeat of the 2024 final.
Kolkata won that final and will be looking to win this one too because they enter this match bottom of the pile. It hasn’t been the beginning of the season that the Sunrisers would have wanted either so this is suddenly a key match for both.
Kolkata Knight Riders
The Kolkata Knight Riders were comfortably the best team in the tournament last season but a year is a long time in cricket. Sunil Narine was a huge factor behind that win last term but he is yet to really get going this season and if he doesn’t come to the party soon it isn’t hard to see the Kolkata Knight Riders struggling a touch because they leave themselves unbalanced with the bat a lot of the time. That has led to a couple of ordinary batting showings so far.
With Andre Russell largely playing as a batter so far, he really needs to come to the party with the bat too. When those two fire, as we saw last season, the Knight Riders can take anyone to the cleaners but it just hasn’t happened for them yet. Their bowlers have suffered a little as a result of that so if Kolkata are going to defend this title successfully then they are going to need to find a huge improvement as quickly as possible.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
The Sunrisers Hyderabad went into the campaign as the favourites with the bookmakers to go one better this time around and when they emphatically blew the Rajasthan Royals out of the water in their opening match there were signs that those expectations could be fulfilled. The Sunrisers play a risky game though and there is probably no middle ground to it. They will either crash everything to the boundary and win the game with the bat or they will lose wickets regularly and fall in a bit of a heap.
It is imperative that Sunrisers find a balance with the bat because they have spent so much money on their batting power that there isn’t a huge amount left with the ball and if they don’t put up par scores at the very least then they are going to be sitting ducks and we’ve seen that in their last two matches. This is very much a Sunrisers side who take risks and will probably bat smarter in a run chase then when they set a score but it is a risky move putting them into bat.
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Key Players
If the Kolkata Knight Riders are going to revive their title defence then you get the feeling that Sunil Narine will need to click into gear with both the bat and the ball but while he is opening Kolkata will be looking at him to fire up quickly.
Travis Head is getting the Sunrisers Hyderabad off to a decent start but be hasn’t yet gone on and made the total that will allow the Sunrisers to be out of sight. They will be looking at their opener to convert a start into a huge score.
Betting
All of the consensus around this match is that it will be high scoring but with the run line up at 383.5 you are going to need both teams to tango for the over to land and Kolkata Knight Riders have fluffed their lines twice with the bat this season and the Sunrisers Hyderabad have also fallen foul of a couple of poor batting displays as well so I’m not sure we are going to get ideal dance partners for the over in this match.
There is also talk of a pitch which offers more for the Kolkata spinners which would certainly not assist high scoring, especially when you consider that both of these batting units would prefer the ball coming onto the bat nicely. We’ve had one match on this ground this season and this line wasn’t covered and in two of the three matches between these two last term it didn’t land. There is enough in the two bowling units to keep two flaky batting units honest and all things being equal I think this run line could just be a smidgeon high.
Tips
Back Under 383.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with Betway
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