DC vs KKR Preview: The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batsmen, desperate to maintain the winning rhythm, will face a tough test in front of the Delhi Capitals’ strong bowling in the Indian Premier League (IPL) match here on Thursday. KKR is troubled by the batsmen’s poor performance from the beginning. His talented opener Shubman Gill is struggling to score runs. He has scored only 89 runs in 6 matches so far.
KKR’s bowling department, especially spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakraborty, has been successful in curbing the batsmen of the opposition team, but the failure of the top-order batsmen is hurting them a lot.
In the last match against Punjab Kings, KKR’s top order was shattered in front of the easy target of 124 runs and their score was reduced to 17 runs for 3 wickets. After this, Captain Eoin Morgan took the responsibility and the team came from 4 matches.
Delhi Capitals have batsmen like Shikhar Dhawan (265 runs), Prithvi Sauv, Steve Smith, and skipper Rishabh Pant and the KKR batsmen will have to put in extra effort to match them. For this Morgan will first have to think about Gill’s form, who have scored 15, 33, 21, 0, 11, and 9 so far. In such a situation, sending Gill in the middle order along with Rahul Tripathi to Sunil Narayan to start the innings would not be a wrong decision. Veteran Sunil Gavaskar has also suggested so.
Delhi had lost to Royal Challengers Bangalore in the previous match. The Delhi team was struggling at a score of 92 for 4, chasing a target of 172 runs. Shimron Hetmyer and Pant took the position with a half-century but Delhi lost in the thrill of that last ball. The match between Hetmyer and Andre Russell can also be seen in this match.
Russell scored 54 off 22 balls against Chennai Super Kings, but apart from this, he has failed to show his power.
Despite the withdrawal of Ravichandran Ashwin, Delhi bowling is strong and KKR batsmen will face a tough test in front of Ishantsharma, Kagiso Rabada, Avesh Khan, veteran Amit Mishra, and Akshar Patel.
DC vs KKR Preview: Full Squad
Teams: Delhi Capitals: Rishabh Pant (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Ajinkya Rahane, Shimron Hetmyer, Marcus Stoinis, Chris Woakes, Shams Mulani, Amit Mishra, Lalit Yadav, Praveen Dubey, Kagiso Rabada, Enrich Nortje, Ishant Sharma, Avesh Khan, Steve Smith, Umesh Yadav, Ripal Patel, Vishnu Vinod, Lukman Meriwala, M. Siddharth, Tom Karen, Sam Billings and Anirudh Joshi.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Eoin Morgan (Captain), Dinesh Karthik, Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Tim Seifert, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narayan, Kuldeep Yadav, Shivam Mavi, Lockie Ferguson, Pat Cummins, Kamlesh Nagerkoti, Sandeep Warrier, Famous Krishna, Rahul Tripathi, Varun Chakraborty, Shakib Al Hasan, Sheldon Jackson, Vaibhav Arora, Harbhajan Singh, Karun Nair, Ben Cutting, Venkatesh Iyer and Pawan Negi.
