Sunrisers Hyderabad v Royal Challengers Bangalore
Hyderabad, April 5, 2017
Start time 2000 local (1430 GMT)
Overall: Sunrisers won five, RCB four
Last season: Sunrisers won two, RCB one
Last year's runners-up and regular favourites RCB will go into the first game of the 2017 season without their two best batsmen, who were also their first two choices as captain.
Virat Kohli was ruled out of the initial stages of the tournament because of the shoulder injury he suffered during the Ranchi Test against Australia, and
AB de Villiers was sidelined by a back problem but is expected to be fit for RCB's second game.
They are also without their first-choice wicketkeeper-batsman
KL Rahul, who played the Tests against Australia despite carrying a shoulder injury, for the entire IPL season, while middle-order batsman
Sarfaraz Khan injured his leg during practice and is likely to be unavailable for the whole tournament as well.
The defending champions Sunrisers are without Bangladesh fast bowler
Mustafizur Rahman, who is playing in Sri Lanka until April 8, but have no other injury concerns at the moment.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 David Warner (capt), 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Moises Henriques, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Deepak Hooda, 6 Naman Ojha (wk), 7 Ben Cutting/Chris Jordan, 8 Bipul Sharma, 9 Rashid Khan, 10 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 11 Ashish Nehra
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Mandeep Singh, 3 Travis Head, 4 Shane Watson (capt), 5 Kedar Jadhav (wk), 6 Sachin Baby, 7 Stuart Binny, 8 Pawan Negi, 9 Yuzvendra Chahal, 10 Tymal Mills, 11 Aniket Choudhary/Harshal Patel
The average first-innings IPL score in Hyderabad since 2014 is 158, and 12 out of 15 matches in that period have been won by the team chasing. Overall, Sunrisers have won seven and lost eight games at home. Warner scores at more than ten runs per over against Shane Watson (26 runs off 15 balls, one dismissal) and Yuzvendra Chahal (90 off 51, one dismissal) in the IPL. When batting for Sunrisers, Warner has scored 448 runs in seven innings at a strike rate of 168 against RCB. Bhuvneshwar has bowled nearly a hundred overs in the Powerplay for Sunrisers. His economy in those overs is only 6.11. Nehra's is 7.39, for 112 deliveries in the Powerplay. Their corresponding figures in the death overs are 8.85 and 8.66.*5.30GMT, April 5: The preview had initially not mentioned that Yuvraj Singh had faced Tymal Mills before. This has been added.