Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will be facing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the ninth match of the IPL 2023 at Eden Gardens on April 6. Kolkata Knight Riders lost against Punjab Kings by seven runs on the DLS method in their opening game. Punjab Kings posted a big total of 191/5, with Tim Southee taking two wickets for the Knight Riders. Then in a rain-interrupted game, Kolkata managed to score just 146/7 in 16 overs with an impact player Venkatesh Iyer scoring 34 off 28 and Andre Russell smashing 35 off 19.
Kolkata Knight Riders
BENCH : Narayan Jagadeesan, S Iyer, Mandeep Singh, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, D Wiese, Vaibhav Arora, LH Ferguson, H Rana, K Khejroliya, Suyash Sharma, JJ Roy
Royal Challengers Bangalore
F du Plessis(C), Virat Kohli, Michael Bracewell, GJ Maxwell, DJ Willey, Anuj Rawat, Dinesh Karthik(wk), Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, HV Patel, KV Sharma
BENCH : RM Patidar, SS Prabhudessai, Finn Allen, Avinash Singh, Rajan Kumar, WG Jacks, M Bhandage, MK Lomror, W Hasaranga, Shahbaz Ahmed, R Sonu Yadav, Josh Hazlewood, S Kaul, RJW Topley, Himanshu Sharma
INJURY AND AVAILABILITY NEWS
David Willey is likely to replace injured Reece Topley for Royal Challengers Bangalore.
PITCH REPORT
The pitch at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens offers a batting-friendly surface in T20 cricket. The average first innings score here is 174 so fans can expect a high-scoring clash on Thursday.