Depleted challengers take on defending champions in season opener

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

*5.30GMT, April 5: The preview had initially not mentioned that Yuvraj Singh had faced Tymal Mills before. This has been added.