Kolkata Knight Riders will be desperate to get back to winning ways when they take on Chennai Super Kings in their penultimate match of the IPL season in Dubai on Thursday. KKR have slipped down to the fifth spot in the table right now having lost their last match to Kings XI Punjab. They are now fighting with the Punjab-based franchise for the fourth playoff spot. Their batsmen have had their issues against high pace but that won’t be the problem when they face the Chennai Super Kings bowlers, most of whom are medium pacers.
CSK are out of playoff contention already and they have nothing to play for except their pride. They registered a superb victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the previous match though. The youngsters like Sam Curran and Ruturaj Gaikwad fired on all cylinders. Their bowlers did an excellent job as they restricted RCB to a paltry total of under 150 and later chased it down with eight wickets to spare. They will be playing at the same venue today and will be eager to notch up another win.
Team News
It is still not clear whether Andre Russell is fit to play. If he is, he might come into the side at the expense of Pat Cummins. As far as CSK ae considered, they don’t have any major injury concerns.
Probable Playing XIs
Chennai Super Kings
Ruturaj Gaikwad, Faf du Plessis, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni (C, wk), Sam Curran, N Jagadeesan, Ravindra Jadeja/R Sai Kishore, Mitchell Santner, Deepak Chahar, Monu Kumar/KM Asif, Imran Tahir
Kolkata Knight Riders
Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Rahul Tripathi, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Eoin Morgan (C), Sunil Narine, Pat Cummins/Andre Russell, Lockie Ferguson, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Prasidh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy
Fantasy Tips
- Ruturaj Gaikwad showed excellent batting form in the last match. He is a must-have in this game as well.
- Sam Curran and Faf du Plessis have been CSK’s best players this season. They give good returns in almost every match and thus are very reliable to have in the team.
- Shubman Gill and Eoin Morgan are the most in-form KKR batsmen. They should be the first batsmen you pick in your team.
- Nitish Rana might have got dismissed for a duck in the previous match but he has played a brilliant knock in the match before. He can be expected to do equally well in this match.
Fantasy Team
MS Dhoni
Shubman Gill
Faf du Plessis
Nitish Rana
Ruturaj Gaikwad
Sam Curran
Sunil Narine
Varun Chakravarthy
Deepak Chahar
Lockie Ferguson
Imran Tahir
