Home
Punjab Kings (PBKS) captain Shikhar Dhawan won the toss and opted to bat first at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. Dhawan made one major change to the side as he brought back Sri Lanka’s Bhanuka Rajapaksa in place of Australian batter Matthew Short.
“The wicket looks quite dry, we would like to put a good totaland defend it. That's a good thing that we are scoring 200 every game. One change, Bhanuka comes in place of Short. (It) Seems like it will stop a bit and come,” Dhawan said after winning the toss.
It may turn out to be a wise move to include Rajapaksa as he can play the spin well and KKR have three of those in Suyash Sharma, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy. The left-handed batter has scored 71 runs from three innings including one six. In the previous encounter against KKR, he scored 50 runs from 32 balls including five fours and two sixes. PBKS won that game by seven runs (DLS method).
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) skipper Nitish Rana did not make any change in the side. Rana shared that he would have liked to bat first as well in these conditions.
“The wicket looks to be on the drier side. We are going with the same team. We wanted to bat first so that spin can come more into play later in the game,” Rana said at the coin toss.
Head-to-head
The two teams have gone up against each other 31 times. KKR have been clear favourites as they have won 20 out of these encounters. PBKS' one of the 11 wins came earlier this season when Arshdeep Singh stood out of the lot. PBKS' record at Eden Gardens, Kolkata is even worse. They have managed to win just three out of 11 encounters.
KKR Playing XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana (c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Varun Chakaravarthy
PBKS Playing XI: Prabhsimran Singh, Shikhar Dhawan (c), Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Sam Curran, Shahrukh Khan, Harpreet Brar, Rishi Dhawan, Rahul Chahar, Arshdeep Singh
