Riyan Parag won his first toss as IPL captain, opting to bowl against hosts Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the afternoon fixture on the first double-header of IPL 2025. Parag confirmed that Rajasthan Royals' (RR) regular captain Sanju Samson, who is currently recuperating from a finger injury, will slot in as their Impact Player when they chase.
RR will line up with an all-Indian top six, including Samson and Vidarbha's Shubham Dubey. They packed their attack with three overseas bowlers: Jofra Archer, Fazalhaq Farooqi and Maheesh Theekshana, who was picked ahead of his Sri Lanka senior Wanindu Hasaranga. Finisher Shimron Hetmyer is the only overseas batter in their entire squad.
As for SRH, they picked three overseas players in their batting XI - captain Pat Cummins, Travis Head and Heinrich Klaasen - and handed an IPL debut to 23-year-old MP batter Aniket Verma. SRH have the option of bringing in Adam Zampa as their Impact Player when they bowl later in the evening.
Verma, 23, has played just one representative T20 so far in December 2024, when he was dismissed for a duck. He was plucked out of the Madhya Pradesh T20 league where he was the top run-getter with 273 runs in six innings at a strike rate of 195. Former Chennai Super Kings quick Simarjeet Singh was picked ahead of left-arm seamer Jaydev Unadkat, who was among SRH's Impact Subs.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Travis Head, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Ishan Kishan (wk), 4 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 5 Heinrich Klaasen, 6 Aniket Verma, 7 Abhinav Manohar, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Simarjeet Singh, 10 Harshal Patel 11 Mohammed Shami.
Impact Subs: Adam Zampa, Sachin Baby, Jaydev Unadkat, Zeeshan Ansari
Rajasthan Royals: 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Shubham Dubey, 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Riyan Parag (capt), 5 Dhruv Jurel (wk), 6 Shimron Hetmyer, 7 Jofra Archer, 8 Maheesh Theekshana, 9 Tushar Deshpande, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 Fazalhaq Farooqi.
Impact subs: Sanju Samson, Kwena Maphaka, Kunal Singh Rathore, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal