Knights and Royals look to put their campaign back on track at Brabourne

IPL heads into another week of hustle as the Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals will be locked in a fierce battle of the willow and the leather to put a couple of contrasting fortunes to the test.

Despite bringing their campaign back to winning ways against the Lucknow Super Giants in a closely-contested thriller, the Royals were once again condemned to a crushing defeat as the Titans reigned supreme in a more or less lopsided encounter.

The Knights started their campaign on a fine note but have suddenly found themselves in the midst of some intimidating hot waters as they were drubbed twice on the bounce after the Delhi Capitals while the Sunrisers Hyderabad surpassed them without any ado whatsoever.

The Knights have fought well with the bat but the repetitive pattern of a crumble in the middle is leaving Andre Russell with too much to perform and despite his best hustle, the side has fallen short by at least 15 to 20 runs.

For the Royals, they have started showing concerns with their batting as Jos Buttler has been the solitary silver lining in a cloud of mediocre performances. Yuzvendra Chahal has spearheaded their bowling with a string of decent displays but as the latest edition of the tournament is slowly coming of age, a lot more chinks in the armor of the Royals are getting evident that was somehow just papered over in the initial games.

This will be an interesting contest as both sides will be raring to make a statement that in the current situation is more important than just a win, given the new doldrums that they have found themselves in.

Venue Watch:

Like the other surfaces at play, the pitch has been a paradise to the batters with occasional assistance to the turners. The pacers will have an added advantage in the early overs of the first innings given the initial bouts of swing and bounce while the second innings will stay witness to some wizarding twist that can be the only ado to the batters. A total of 8 T20I matches have been played at the stadium with the teams batting first only winning 2 of them while the teams chasing has secured 6 victories. The last two games played at this stadium has seen the batters putting up unparalleled dominion while the afternoon game between Mumbai and the Giants saw Lucknow defending the total narrowly in a high-scoring encounter while KKR was drubbed by the Sunrisers who chased down the total in another high-scoring encounter.

Squads:

Rajasthan Royals:

Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler (R), Yashasvi Jaiswal (R), R Ashwin, Trent Boult, Shimron Hetmyer, Devdutt Padikkal, Prasidh Krishna, Yuzvendra Chahal, Riyan Parag, KC Cariappa, Navdeep Saini, Obed McCoy, Arunay Singh, Kuldeep Sen, Karun Nair, Dhruv Jurel, Tejas Baroka, Kuldeep Yadav, Shubham Garhwal, James Neesham, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rassie Van Der Dussen, Daryl Mitchell

Kolkata Knight Riders:

Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine, Shreyas Iyer, Pat Cummins, Nitish Rana, Shivam Mavi, Sheldon Jackson, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Dar, Chamika Karunaratne, Baba Indrajith, Ashok Sharma, Pratham Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Sam Billings, Alex Hales, Ramesh Kumar, Mohammed Nabi, Aman Khan, Umesh Yadav.

Match Details:

Kolkata Knight Riders vs Rajasthan Royals

Venue: Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai

Date: 18th April 2022

Time: 7:30 PM IST