Upbeat Kolkata take on mighty Mumbai
After thrashing RCB in a onesided encounter a couple of days back, Kolkata Knight Riders are taking on the mighty Mumbai Indians. After a slow start, Kolkata have slowly started to pick up and they need five wins from their remaining six games to qualify.
Things are not easy as Kolkata are going to clash against fourtime champions Mumbai Indians, who themselves are in a tough position, where they need to win 4 out of the 6 games to qualify. When going head-to-head, Mumbai have totally dominated Kolkata with a tally of 22:6, with 3 games happening at this venue where again Mumbai Indians dominate with 2:1 wins.
ROHIT, HARDIK ABSENT
Mumbai are a well balanced side, but the absence of captain Rohit Sharma and star all-rounder Hardik Pandya cost them in a crucial encounter against Chennai Super Kings. Both are expected to be back in Thursday’s match, but the question is that would their return cost Anmolpreet and Saurabh Tiwary their slots, even when both looked pretty good and deserve another chance.
Krunal Pandya, who has been in the core of Mumbai Indians, got hit for 27 runs in 2 overs and also looked quite shaky while batting. Krunal was pretty unfortunate to get run out at a crucial time, yet he might not be considered for a replacement.
In the bowling department, Trent Boult, David Milne and Jasprit Bumrah looked quite good initially, before they were destroyed by the class of Rituraj in the death overs. Another young leg spinning sensation was Rahul Chahar, who did extremely well in the match against Chennai. Pollard is too good a back-up bowler and certainly needs to be considered coming in a little early. The West Indian could also play as the fifth bowler in the team.
POWER-HITTING TEAM
Kolkata is known for their power-hitting abilities, because of a middle order which consists of Eoin Morgan, Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik and Sunil Narine. They were led by the class of Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer, who had an opening partnership of 82 runs in 9.1 overs, chasing 93 to win against the Royal Challengers
Bangalore. The main damage was done to Royal Challengers Bangalore by Varun Chakravarthy and Andre Russell, who picked up 3 wickets a piece to break the back of Bangalore.
Between the raw aggressive pace of Prasidh Krishna, Lockie Ferguson and Andre Russell, the slow mystery spin of Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine excel at its best. After making it to the Indian team since this year, Varun’s bowling has been extremely impressive. His confidence has been at another level and his habit of picking of wickets regularly, while being extremely miser in terms of conceding runs has been the key for Kolkata.
Bowling has not been a major reason for concern for KKR so far. The problem was with Shubhman Gill not able to give them a good start, which would allow the middle order batsman to play free and express themselves. If Venkatesh also supports Shubhman to make sure that Kolkata get to 100 for somewhere around 2 wickets, then the middle order has to power to completely destruct the opposition out of the game, on their day.
WHAT TO EXPECT?
It is a contest of Mumbai’s bowling vs Kolkata’s batting. Both teams would like to chase, considering the initial movement in the first innings, which has led to most teams’ losing a few early wickets.
All wickets are trying to be preserved for the T20 world cup, which forces the groundsman to leave a certain amount of grass cover, that allows the ball to swing for at least 15 to 20 minutes, which is quite a big share in the T20 category.
Also expect some good and clean power hitting from Hardik and Russell, which should allow this match to be an over 170 runs contest, with some big towering sixes in and over the stands.