Knights and Sunrisers battle it out in a must-win encounter

A game that can have a tidal effect on the points table would be pitting the likes of Sunrisers Hyderabad against the struggling Kolkata Knight Riders on a fascinating Saturday evening. Both the sides have had their fair shares of troughs and crests and with the race for the play-offs heating up more than ever as whichever team loses moves one step closer to the ledge.

Despite a string of woeful runs that would see the Knights stutter vehemently in the ongoing edition of the tournament, they would take heart from the fact that they were finally able to secure a convincing win against the Mumbai Indians, a side that has always troubled them.

However, for the Sunrisers, whatever unfolds, they are in clusters, may it be wins or losses. They started their campaign with two consecutive losses and then came back strongly to chronicle five victories on the trot. Ever since their last win against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the team entered an interminable limbo and are still desperate to get out of it.

This will be an exciting contest of the willow and the leather considering the varying set of strengths that both the teams will be bringing to this affair. With Pat Cummins out of the remainder of the tournament, the responsibility of bagging the wickets would fall on Tim Southee who has done a decent job until now.

Venue Watch:

The surface at MCA in Pune has recently been conducive to the bowlers and the kind of impact that they have had throughout the game will be reverberating through today’s contest as well. The last game played here would only produce an aggregate of 226 that at times have been the score for just a single innings in the ongoing edition of the IPL. There will be ample turn on the surface and the batters will have to be careful in choosing their strokes. A total of 170 seems fairly defendable on the track if there are no last-minute modulations.

Squads:

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, Chamika Karunaratne, Baba Indrajith, Ashok Sharma, Pratham Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Sam Billings, Alex Hales, Ramesh Kumar, Mohammed Nabi, Aman Khan, Umesh Yadav.

Sunrisers Hyderabad:

Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Saurabh Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi.

Match Details:

Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad

Venue: Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune

Date: 14th May 2022

Time: 7:30 PM IST