Knights eager to bolster their armour as Giants take aim

The Knights return to action on a crackling Saturday evening as they lock horns with a soaring Lucknow Super Giants who would now try and secure their playoffs berth while the former only dreams of certain permutations and combinations, all coming together to probably impart them a place in the play-offs.

The Knights will be brimming with panache as they tamed the Rajasthan Royals emphatically in the preceding encounter with their batters put up a resonating display after a shaky start and some impressive bowling. Rinku Singh would conjure another batting masterclass and come together with Nitish Rana to seal the fate of the tie.

The Super Giants have been on a fine run but even in a tournament where they have felt unstoppable at times, there have been occasions where they have resigned in docile submission. However, their last game would witness them escape barely by the skin of their teeth as the Delhi Capitals would fall short of the Promise Land by a slender margin of 6 runs.’

This will be a fascinating stramash considering the contrasting strengths of both the sides. For the Knights, their bowlers have pulled off a more decent show than their batters. However, Rinku Singh has been in pretty decent touch of late, where he has chipped in with a couple of match-defining knocks. The Giants, on the contrary, are a bit more reliable on their hefty batting unit with intermittent bursts of excellence from their bowlers.

Venue Watch:

The game is all set to be played at the MCA Stadium in Pune, a track that has offered something for both the batters and the bowlers. The batters have an upper hand considering the flat nature of the surface while the bowlers will have some early carry and some late turn. Given the dew factor, the latter half of the game may see this contest being heavily tipped towards the batting side. The last contest played out at the MCA featured RCB and CSK where the former will eventually walk away with the bragging rights as they piled 173 runs.

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.

Lucknow Super Giants:

KL Rahul (c & wk), Quinton de Kock (wk), Manish Pandey, Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya, Evin Lewis, Marcus Stoinis, Jason Holder, Andrew Tye, Kyle Mayers, Avesh Khan, Dushmantha Chameera, Ravi Bishnoi, Ayush Badoni, Manan Vohra, Krishnappa Gowtham, Shahbaz Nadeem, Ankit Rajpoot, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan, Karan Sharma.

Match Details:

Kolkata Knight Riders vs Lucknow Super Giants

Venue: Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune

Date: 7th May 2022

Time: 7:30 PM IST