Pat Cummins will be the Sunrisers Hyderabad’s new captain starting in the 2024 IPL season, the team has officially confirmed.

Aiden Markram will be replaced at SRH by Cummins, who guided Australia to the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup in 2023.

During the IPL 2024 auction, the Australian pacer went for 20.5 crore rupees, making him the second most expensive player in the tournament’s history.

The news was made just one day after it was reported that Cummins was expected to take Markram’s spot as the team’s captain for the next campaign.

During a interview, Cummins said, India is a second home to him. They are here for a very long time. IPL you’ve got your home teams, he added. It feels genuinely that he has a large following here. Or cricket supporters who have at least cheered you on, or, you know, many people who approach him and said, Oh, he is from Kolkata or they support KKR. Thus, it’s comforting to know that not everyone is against you, Cummins added.

In his first match as captain at the historic Eden Gardens, Cummins will be back in familiar surroundings as he takes against his former team, the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).

Cummins will play in the IPL for the eighth time in 2024. He was formerly a member of the KKR team, which paid an astounding 15.50 crores to acquire him—the highest price paid at the 2020 Indian Premier League auction. Cummins, while smashing the fastest fifty-run in IPL history at the time with 14 balls, did not, however, measure up to the expectations associated with the price tag, particularly with the ball. In 2022, he made his final IPL appearance, appearing in five matches, taking seven wickets and only managing 63 runs.

The match is scheduled for March 23, the first double header of the 2023 season.

Meanwhile, SRH squad includes Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Pat Cummins, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan.

In the presence of pacer Deepak Chahar, who will be aiming for a national comeback through an ongoing run for his team in the IPL commencing on March 22, the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) pre-season training got underway here on Saturday.

An official from the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) said the first batch of local (Indian) players arrived on Friday, and more are expected to arrive in the coming days.

The first group of players to arrive in the city were Simarjeet Singh (pacer), Rajvardhan Hangargekar (all-rounder), Mukesh Choudhary (pacer), Prashant Solanki (spinner), Ajay Mandal (all-rounder), and Deepak Chahar (seamer), as verified by CSK on Friday.

But last month, when working out at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru, he declared himself perfectly fit. With the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the USA in June, the injury-prone bowler is hoping to return to the national team.

However, the team’s captain and fans favorite, MS Dhoni He was seen in Jamnagar on Friday with his wife Sakshi, where they were present to attend Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s pre-wedding event.

On March 22, CSK will play their first IPL 2024 match against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at Chepauk Stadium in Chennai.

It is anticipated that this would be last season for MS Dhoni. The keeper-batter would like to win the title one last time to cap off his stellar career.

After four years, women’s red-ball cricket will be contested domestically in India again as the BCCI holds the senior inter zonal multi-day Trophy in Pune starting on March 28, the board said on Friday.

Following the Indian women’s team’s return to Test cricket, the decision was taken. In recent years, the team has faced Australia and England in Test matches. The last time women’s domestic red ball cricket was played was in 2018.

Former India bowler Amita Sharma said this is a positive move made by BCCI.  Sharma said, they need the next generation of cricketers to play red ball cricket at the domestic level. The national team has started playing Test cricket again.

Red ball should be played at the state level as well, not simply the zonal level, in her opinion. They had both of those incidents back then, she continued.

Six teams representing the East, West, North, South, Central, and North-East zones will compete in the tournament, which is being hosted by the Maharashtra Cricket Association.

Taking place over three days each, the five matches they will compete in will be one day longer than the two-day games of the 2018 season.

The tournament will start immediately following the Women’s Premier League, which concludes on March 17.

On March 28, the quarterfinals between the East and North East Zones and the West and Central Zones will take place. On April 3, the semifinals are scheduled. The final match is scheduled to be held on April 9, 10 and 11.

Meanwhile, the Women’s Premier League (WPL) is off to a great start in its second edition. There have already been a few nail-biting dramas in the six-team competition, and it looks like more to come. Delhi Capitals (DC) have won two of their last three games and are now top of the rankings with four points. Both the Mumbai Indians (MI) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have four points overall, although they lag behind DC on the net run rate (NRR).