Kolkata and Lucknow kick off an intense final IPL league round

As the dusk looms on the group stages of IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders take on the Lucknow Super Giants to kick off the final round of the league fixtures. In the marathon extravaganza that IPL is, this is one game that would just pen the overture to the maddening enigma called points table.

The pecking order of the IPL is very precariously placed and barring Gujarat Titans, any team can be knocked out at the moment, and even the team with the slightest chance of making the playoffs can be a part of the eliminator and qualifier.

Kolkata come into this battle on the back of a thumping win against the Sunrisers Hyderabad as their bowlers conjured an excellent display, led by Andre Russell. The Caribbean muscleman has been in sublime form in the ongoing edition, and he stitched together an unbeaten 49 off just 28 balls and would cap it off with a match-winning bowling performance, scalping 3 wickets at the expense of just 22 runs in the previous fixture.

The Super Giants suffered another crushing defeat at the hands of the Rajasthan Royals as Trent Boult dished out an all-round display to dent their soaring spirits despite a fighting effort from Deepak Hooda. Somehow, their batting has stuttered over the last couple of games and unless they find a way to plug the loopholes, it won’t be a ride into a perfect sunset.

Venue Watch:

The game is slated to be played at Dr. DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai and this surface has so far shown a decent balance between the batters and the bowlers. It is no longer just a batter’s day out. It will have fragmented sway to offer to both with dew making the proceedings slightly easier to bat on in the second half of the innings. The last game on the surface produced a modest scoring encounter that would stay witness to the Capitals successfully defending 159.

Ideal result for RCB:

A win for LSG will be enough for them to make the playoffs that would eventually crash KKR out of the running. Now if KKR wins, they will be equalling RCB’s tally of 14 points and will surge ahead in the pecking order, courtesy of a superior net run rate. Add to that a more convincing win for the Knights will actually bring LSG’s net run rate down. Now if RCB can secure a win in tomorrow’s game by a decent margin that would spell the doom for KKR and LSG, irrespective of the result in DC’s game against Mumbai Indians. The ideal result in this fixture should be Kolkata winning by a massive margin that would witness a colossal turnaround of affairs in IPL 2022.

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: Dr. DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai

Date: 15th May 2022

Time: 7:30 PM IST