Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will take on Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the 56th match of the Indian Premier League 2023. This match will be played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Rajasthan Royals are fifth in the points table with five wins and six losses in 11 matches. They lost their previous match against Sunrisers by 4 wickets in a nail-biting finish which was decided in the last ball. They had the game in their bag until a no-ball by Sandeep Sharma in the final ball proved to be costly. After starting the season well, the Rajasthan Royals have had a slump in form losing four of their previous 5 matches, and find themselves in this scenario where they cannot afford to lose any more games.
On the other hand, Kolkata Knight Riders are sixth in the table with five wins and six losses in 11 matches. They have won their previous few matches against Punjab Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad to keep their qualification hopes alive. They will be playing at home and look to make use of the condiitions. They have won three out of their previous five matches and found a combination which seems to be working well for them. However this is a crucial match for both these sides and the winner of this match will move into the top 4 of the points table. These two sides have met each other 27 times and Kolkata Knight Riders have an advantage winning 14 of those match while Rajasthan have won 12. This promises to be an exciting match.
PROBABLE PLAYING XI
Kolkata Knight Riders
RK Singh, JJ Roy, N Rana(C), AD Russell, SP Narine, VR Iyer, Rahmanullah Gurbaz(wk), Shardul Thakur, Varun Chakravarthy, Vaibhav Arora, H Rana
BENCH : Mandeep Singh, Tim Southee, UT Yadav, AS Roy, Narayan Jagadeesan, D Wiese, Suyash Sharma, S Iyer, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, LH Ferguson, K Khejroliya, , Johnson Charles
Rajasthan Royals
Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, Shimron Hetmyer, JE Root, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jos Buttler, SV Samson(C), Trent Boult, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sandeep Sharma, Kuldip Yadav
BENCH : R Parag, Jason Holder, KM Asif, NA Saini, DC Jurel, D Ferreira, Murugan Ashwin, Kunal Singh Rathore, Abdul Basith, AP Vasisht, KC Cariappa, OC McCoy, KR Sen, A Zampa
PITCH REPORT
The surface here will be a balanced one with good help for pacers initially and batting will get easier as the game progresses. The average first innings score at this venue is 164 and teams batting second have won majority of the matches. Both teams will prefer chasing considering the dew factor.
