Having started their campaign with an opening-day defeat to Royal Challengers Bengaluru, defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders will take the field for a clash with Rajasthan Royals at Guwahati on Wednesday hoping to put their campaign back on the rails.
Rajasthan Royals will also be hoping for their first win this season as they had started with a defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. Incidentally, it was SRH that had put Rajasthan Royals out of IPL 2024 with a victory in the Qualifiers.
In their opening match, KKR endured a tough start to their campaign, losing to RCB by seven wickets. While Ajinkya Rahane, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, and Sunil Narine contributed with the bat, their middle order failed to fire. Experienced allrounder Andre Russell managed just four runs, while Venkatesh Iyer also fell cheaply, exposing a weak link that cost them the match.
KKR's bowling coach Bharat Arun expressed confidence and optimism on the eve of their crucial match against Rajasthan Royals at the Barsapara Stadium, despite losing their opening game of the tournament.
We are not too worried about it. There are a lot of positives from the first game, and some lessons to be learned as well. It's always good to win the first match, you gain the momentum. But there were a lot of positives from the first game, some lessons to be learned from there.
The bowling coach emphasized the team's resilience, pointing out that the key to success lies in seizing critical moments during matches.
Every team is batting and bowling well. But the team that snatches those crucial moments at any given point of time is going to win.
Arun revealed a personal connection to the match venue, describing Guwahati as 'our second home,' and noting their proximity to Kolkata and shared language.
In game number one, we could have capitalised, we could have got more runs had we not lost wickets towards the end of our batting. Whatever you do there is always an opportunity to bowl better. But this team is not too worried about it, we will learn from what happened in the last game and try to get better.
Rajasthan Royals will also be looking forward to doing well in this match. They were hammered by Sunrisers Hyderabad in their first match and conceded a huge total of 286 runs, the second-highest score ever in IPL.
Rajasthan were on track in the big chase with a hundred-plus fourth-wicket partnership between Sanju Samson (Impact Substitute) and Dhruv Jurel, both hitting half-centuries. But in the end, they could only manage to score 242 and lost the match by 44 runs.
Against SRH, Rajasthan struggled with their bowling and thus for their next match, they may bring in Sri Lankan mystery spinner Wanindu Hasaranga.
Sanju Samson will continue to be the Impact Substitute while stand-in skipper Riyan Parag will be hoping for a better effort from his bowlers. Till a few months back, Hasaranga was the world's top T20I bowler and Rajasthan Royals will be hoping that the experienced spinner would boost their attack and help them get the better of KKR.
Possible teams: Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag (c), Nitish Rana, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Shimron Hetmyer, Shubham Dubey, Jofra Archer, Maheesh Theekshana/Wanindu Hasaranga, Sandeep Sharma, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Tushar Deshpande/Akash Madhwal.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Quinton de Kock (wk), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Spencer Johnson/Anrich Nortje, Varun Chakravarthy, Vaibhav Arora.
