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.
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
