IPL 2025: Hyderabad elect to bowl against Delhi in a must-win clash

Hyderabad, May 5 (IANS) Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) won the toss and elected to bowl first against Delhi Capitals (DC) in match 55 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. All-rounder T. Natarajan will be making his debut for Delhi Capitals as Mohammad Shami and Nitish Kumar Reddy are dropped from the SRH playing XI.

Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Pat Cummins said, "We'll bowl. We've talked about a few things, but haven't had a complete game yet. Want to do the basics well. It's about giving yourself the chance, everyone's a match-winner. We bat very deep.

"The support has been amazing, probably haven't had the results we wanted, but the crowd has been amazing. Buzzing around in the field, that's one thing we can judge ourselves on," he said.

Delhi Capitals captain Axar Patel said, "Would've fielded first as well, looks like a good wicket and it shouldn't change much. Will look to get a good score and restrict them. The last phase is here, and these are must-win games. We've tried to keep the environment light, we weren't thinking about these things at the start of the tournament, and we played well, wanted to go into these games with the same mindset and not let the situation pressure us.

"We've had different players contribute, we haven't been dependent on one player. We want to have close games, even if we lose, we don't want to lose by big margins. No changes," he added.

Playing XIs:

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan (wk), Sachin Baby, Heinrich Klaasen, Aniket Verma, Abhinav Manohar, Pat Cummins (capt), Harshal Patel, Zeeshan Ansari, Eshan Malinga, Jaydev Unadkat

Impact substitutes: Travis Head, Mohammed Shami, Harsh Dubey, Rahul Chahar, Wiaan Mulder

Delhi Capitals: Abishek Porel, Faf du Plessis, Karun Nair, KL Rahul (wk), Axar Patel (capt), Tristan Stubbs, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan

Impact substitutes: Ashutosh Sharma, Mohit Sharma, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Sameer Rizvi, Mukesh Kumar

--IANS

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