Pune, May 14 (IANS): Kolkata Knight Riders captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss, opted to bat first against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 61st match of the IPL 2022 at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, here on Saturday.

Kolkata, who need to win this game to stay alive in the playoffs race, made two changes in their playing XI as Umesh Yadav and Sam Billings came in place of Sheldon Jackson and Pat Cummins, for this match.

"We will bat first here. If you see the record here, teams batting first have done well and batting first also suits us. Forced to make changes this time. Pat is injured, so Umesh comes in and Sam Billings comes in for Sheldon Jackson," said KKR skipper Iyer at the toss.

"We had ups and downs, so we made a lot of changes. It's not something we wanted to do and if you see the form of the batters, we had to make those changes. We came to the core strength we started with and we got a good start in the previous game, both batting and bowling," he added.

On the other hand, Hyderabad, who are at the seventh spot with five wins, made three changes in their team, bringing in T Natarajan, Washington Sundar and Marco Jansen for Kartik Tyagi, Jagadeesha Suchith and Fazalhaq Farooqi.

"We played on this surface the other day and we were looking to bat as well. Natarajan and Washington are back. Jansen is back in for Farooqi as well. We haven't been quite at our best in the last few games. So we want to turn that around. NIce to have a couple of good performers back in the side," said SRH captain Kane WIlliamson.

Playing XIs:

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Abhishek Sharma, Kane Williamson(c), Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nicholas Pooran(w), Shashank Singh, Washington Sundar, Marco Jansen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik

Kolkata Knight Riders: Venkatesh Iyer, Ajinkya Rahane, Nitish Rana, Shreyas Iyer(c), Sam Billings(w), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Varun Chakaravarthy