Yahoo Finance Toss: Williamson Elects to Bat First, Delhi Play Ashwin But No Place for Smith
Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Kane Williamson has won the toss and elected to bat first against Delhi Capitals in both teams' first match of the IPL 2021 in the UAE.
"Warner, Holder, Rashid and myself are the four overseas players," says Williamson while announcing his team at the toss.
Nortje, Rabada, Hetmyer and Stoinis are DC's four overseas players meaning Steve Smith will be sitting this one out.
SRH were dealt a setback on Tuesday when bowler T Natarajan tested positive in his routine COVID test. The entire squad underwent a test at 5am local time on Wednesday and only after their reports were all negative did the BCCI announce the match against DC will go ahead as scheduled.
Also Read: T Natarajan Tests COVID Positive, Close Contacts Isolated; DC Match to be Played
Before Covid-19 in the IPL teams' camps hampered the season in early May, postponing the remaining matches, DC had won six out of eight matches and had 12 points. SRH, on the other hand, had two points from seven matches with one win and six losses.
The Hyderabad franchise, that witnessed change in captaincy in the first half of this year's IPL, had lost its last three matches including one against Delhi Capitals in the Super Over. However, they would look for a fresh and lucky start as the tournament has resumes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a venue where they made the last-four stage last season. In fact, they lost to Delhi Capitals in the Qualifier 2.
Delhi Capitals though play a stronger XI with former skipper Shreyas Iyer returning to the squad following recovery from shoulder injury.
Playing XIs
Delhi Capitals: Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (captain and wicketkeeper), Marcus Stoinis, Shimron Hetmyer, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kagiso Rabada, Avesh Khana and Anrich Nortje
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (captain), David Warner, Wriddhiman Saha (wicketkeeper), Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Abdul Samad, Jason Holder, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma and Khaleel Ahmed
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