Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bangalore Playing 11 Prediction: After almost four years, KKR team will play their home match and during this time team owner Shahrukh Khan can also be present. KKR played their last match at Eden Gardens on April 28, 2019 in which they defeated Mumbai Indians by 34 runs.
Expansion
Two-time winners Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will face a tough challenge from the in-form Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the IPL match on Thursday. Kolkata is struggling to prepare a balanced team due to the absence of its key players, but in this match, it would like to take advantage of the home conditions and return to the winning track. KKR has had a poor start to this season. The team had to lose their opening match to Punjab Kings by seven runs in Mohali.
The team’s star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan of Bangladesh has been ruled out of the current season of IPL due to family reasons. Apart from him, the team’s regular captain Shreyas Iyer is also ruled out as he has to undergo an operation for his back injury. KKR is being captained by Nitish Rana but the franchise was expecting Iyer to join the team midway through the season, but with his ouster, coach Chandrakant Pandit’s side are also struggling to find a good leader.
After almost four years, KKR team will play their home match and during this time team owner Shahrukh Khan can also be present. KKR played their last match at Eden Gardens on April 28, 2019 in which they defeated Mumbai Indians by 34 runs.
KKR’s batting was weak
With Iyer out, the team’s batting has weakened. In the last match against Punjab, the batsmen were disappointing and Andre Russell-Venkatesh Iyer’s 50-run partnership was the best. Afghanistan’s wicket-keeper batsman Rahmanullah Gurbaz played a flamboyant inning of 22 runs and he will now be expected to do well in this match.
Bowlers raised concern
KKR’s main bowlers also scored a lot of runs against Punjab. Fast bowler Tim Southee and spinner Sunil Narine had given enough runs, due to which the pressure could not be created on the Punjab batsmen. The team management needs to work on the bowling as well.
Challenge to stop Kohli-Duplessis
On one hand, the poor bowling of KKR remains a matter of concern, on the other hand, stopping RCB’s star batsman Virat Kohli and captain Faf Duplessis has become a big challenge for the team. Virat had scored an unbeaten 82 off 49 balls in the last match against Mumbai Indians. At the same time, Faf scored 73 runs in 43 balls. RCB have such a fast bowling attack in the form of Mohammad Siraj, Harshal Patel and Akash Deep that can pile up any batting line-up. All three also know how to take advantage of the conditions at Eden Gardens.
Possible playing-11 of both the teams
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana (c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Shardul Thakur, Sunil Narine, Tim Southee/Lockie Ferguson, Anukul Roy, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakraborty.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, Faf Duplessis (c), Glenn Maxwell, Michael Bracewell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Karn Sharma, Harshal Patel, Akash Deep, David Willey, Mohammad Siraj.
Teams
Kolkata Knight Riders: Nitish Rana (Captain), Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Lockie Ferguson, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakraborty, Anukul Roy, Rinku Singh, N. Jagdishan, Vaibhav Arora, Suyash Sharma, David Weiss, Kulwant Khejroliya, Liton Das and Mandeep Singh.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf Duplessis (Captain), Virat Kohli, Suyash Prabhudesai, Dinesh Karthik, Anuj Rawat, Finn Allen, Glenn Maxwell, Wanindu Hasaranga, Shahbaz Ahmed, Harshal Patel, David Willey, Karn Sharma, Mahipal Lomror, Mohammed Siraj, Josh Hazlewood, Siddharth Kaul, Akashdeep, Reece Topley, Himanshu Sharma and Michael Bracewell.
