Kolkata: Cameron Green, Mohammed Siraj and Karn Sharma come back into the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) playing eleven as captain Faf du Plessis won the toss and elected to bowl first against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in match 36 of IPL 2024 at the Eden Gardens Sunday afternoon.
RCB are at the bottom of the table and are currently on a five-game losing streak, with time running out for them to make a turnaround in the tournament. Green, Siraj and Karn come into the eleven in place of Reece Topley, Vyshak Vijaykumar and Shivam Chauhan.
“This is probably a chasing ground, always has been. I’m a fan of batting first when it’s really hot, but the temperature did drop after an hour or so yesterday, unlike in Mumbai or Chennai where it stays very hot.
“The batting is so strong that a general score or 60-70 isn’t considered great during the batting PP. We know if we do a few things back, the momentum can be back and we do have the firepower,” said du Plessis.
KKR, at third place in points table, come back into action after being beaten in a thrilling contest by Rajasthan Royals last week and are fielding an unchanged playing eleven for Sunday’s game. “Last afternoon game here, we know how the wicket plays, we would have loved to bowl as well. It’s stiflingly hot and we’ll look to make them as tired as possible.”
“We’ve tried to keep things simple, it’s not about how you start, it’s about how you end, just stick to the basics. We are playing the same team. It’s important to assess the conditions, execute our plans, then it’ll go in our favour,” said skipper Shreyas Iyer.
Playing XIs
Kolkata Knight Riders: Philip Salt (wicketkeeper), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Shreyas Iyer (captain), Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakaravarthy and Harshit Rana
Substitutes: Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora and Rahmanullah Gurbaz
Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Faf du Plessis (captain), Virat Kohli, Will Jacks, Rajat Patidar, Cameron Green, Dinesh Karthik (wicketkeeper), Mahipal Lomror, Karn Sharma, Lockie Ferguson, Yash Dayal and Mohammed Siraj
Substitutes: Suyash Prabhudessai, Anuj Rawat, Himanshu Sharma, Vijaykumar Vyshak and Swapnil Singh
IANS