The Kolkata Knight Riders are having a good tournament so far. In the five games played up to now, they have won four and accumulated eight points. Currently, they sit in the second position in the points table and boast the best net run rate in the competition at +1.688. The Kolkata team enters this game on the back of a victory in their last match against the Lucknow Super Giants. KKR secured a convincing win by eight wickets in that encounter, with a whopping 26 balls to spare. Mitchell Starc has finally returned to KKR, taking three wickets against LSG for 28 runs in his four overs. Some other bowlers, like Vaibhav Arora, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, and Varun Chakravarthy, managed to pick up one wicket each. KKR’s response was swift. Despite the early loss of Sunil Narine and Abhishek Raghuvanshi, Phil Salt smashed the ball all over the ground, scoring 89 runs off just 47 balls with three sixes and fourteen fours. He was well supported by captain Shreyas Iyer, who remained unbeaten on 38 runs.
On the other hand, members of the royal Rajasthan family have performed even better in the competition. They have won five out of their last six games and are currently sitting at the top of the points table. They have accumulated ten points and have a net run rate of +0.767. The RR team also enters this game after a victory in their last match against the Punjab Kings. This game was played yesterday in Mohali. Punjab Kings batted first, scoring 147 runs while losing eight wickets. Rajasthan chased down this target in the final over of the game. The Rajasthan Royals had to withstand Punjab’s energetic defense and lost seven wickets, reaching the target in 19.5 overs. Keshav Maharaj was the standout bowler for RR. He returned figures of 4-0-23-2. Avesh Khan also picked up a couple of wickets but conceded 34 runs. RR started their innings well, with most of their top batsmen, such as Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tanush Kotian, Sanju Samson, and Riyan Parag, contributing to the score. However, Shimron Hetmyer put the finishing touches on Rajasthan’s victory.
