(Cricket news) It's not the best of times for Kolkata Knight Riders to face MI, seeing that their head-to-head with Mumbai Indians is pretty ordinary, for some reason MI always had their measure against KKR. When KKR played MI this season, Daniel Sams ended the match with an over to forget, as Pat Cummins took 35 off that over to score the joint-fastest half-century in the IPL, but with the majority of the season done, both teams look like out of the playoffs race already.
KKR’s main concern has been selecting a consistent side over the league phase as they have used close to 20 players to play in the playing XI. There have been honest confessions from the head coach Brendon McCullum about being aware that the opposition is testing his batters with a barrage of bouncers, but they haven’t found any answers to counter it as yet. Much like how their woes in the batting powerplay despite trying out five different opening combinations have hampered them from giving them a get start at the top of the order. In the bowling department, Sunil Narine will hold the key as he has the best economy rate of 5.23 in the IPL this year. His record battle against Rohit Sharma will be one to watch out for, he has dismissed him nine times in 170 balls, conceding runs at a rate of 107.65, Tim Southee has also been fairly successful against the MI skipper.
MI will be confident after getting two wins on the board and will be proud of the effort in the last match, where they defended 9 runs of the last over to win against the table topper Gujarat Titans. In terms of batting all the Indian cricket fans would want to see Rohit Sharma score some runs this tournament as he has hardly got going in this year's edition, the MI young guns have been carrying the mantle of scoring the majority of the runs this season. One positive over the two wins was that Tim David played brilliant finishing knocks to take his team to victory as his hefty price tag is finally paying some dividence. In the bowling department, the five-time champions have managed the second-worst economy rate (9.04) of all teams in the middle overs but could exploit KKR’s powerplay struggles. Riley Meredith could be used to test the KKR batters with bouncers as Bumrah vs Russell will be a battle to look out for, he has dismissed the hard-hitting West Indian thrice in 49 balls, conceding runs at a rate of only 134.69.
Pitch and weather report: The DY Patil pitch has been a hard surface as batting becomes easier once the batsman is settled and can negate the early swing. Last match proved that chasing would have its advantages even as Delhi Capitals fell 91 runs short of Chennai Super Kings' score on Sunday evening. The temperature is going to hover around 31 degrees, the conditions are expected to be cloudy with high humidity levels as dew might play a part later on.
Interesting facts:
- With 328 runs, Tilak Varma is Mumbai India's leading run-getter of the season so far and the highest run getter for uncapped players
- Mumbai have won 22 of their 30 games against Knight Riders. Their win percentage of 73.33, the highest win percentage against another team in IPL history.
- In all T20s since the start of 2021, no batter has hit more sixes in the death overs than Tim David (47).
- Rohit's average of 19.80 in IPL 2022 is his worst in any season of the tournament.
- Mumbai are set to play their 250th T20 match overall.
- Shreyas Iyer needs to hit four more sixes to reach 100 sixes in the IPL.
- Andre Russell (1972) needs 28 runs to complete 2000 runs in the IPL
Also read: Head coach Brendon McCullum rues KKR's power play struggles
Probable XI for KKR:
1 B Indrajith (wk), 2 Aaron Finch/Sam Billings, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Nitish Rana, 5 Rinku Singh, 6 Andre Russell, 7 Anukul Roy, 8 Shivam Mavi/Venkatesh Iyer, 9 Sunil Narine, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Harshit Rana/Umesh Yadav
Probable XI for MI:
1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Ishan Kishan (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Tilak Varma, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Tim David, 7 Daniel Sams, 8 M Ashwin/Hrithik Shokeen, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Kumar Kartikeya, 11 Riley Meredith
