Kolkata Knight Riders would look to seal their spot in the play-offs by beating Rising Pune Supergiant on Wednesday. Image Source: twitter[/caption]Kolkata: Gautam Gambhir led Kolkata knight Riders would like to forget their huge defeat of the season against defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad when they take on a high on confidence Rising Pune Supergiant in an Indian Premier League encounter at the Eden Gardens on Wednesday. A win against the visitors will help KKR to reach the magic number 16 and seal their place in the knock-out stage after Mumbai Indians became the first team to qualify for the play-offs in IPL season 10.
The two time IPL champions suffered their biggest defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad couple of day’s back, on the other hand Steve Smith’s RPS have found their form at the right time as they have won their last two games in the cash-rich tournament.
The main reason for KKR’s defeat against SRH was their sloppy fielding. They gave Warner quite a few chances on the field and he capitalized the chances by scoring a blistering century against one of the deadliest bowling line-up of the current season.
Put into bat first, David Warner played a fiery knock to score a century and helped the home team to post a mammoth of a total of 209.
In reply, the table-toppers had no clue how to chase the huge total of 210 to win and they could only score 161 for seven in their allotted 20 overs to face their third defeat of the season.
Barring Robin Uthappa, who made a valiant half-century, no other KKR batsmen lived up to the challenge, exposing the chinks in their middle and lower order.
The confidence of skipper Gautam Gambhir, who had said during the toss against Sunrisers that they are "comfortable chasing so no point changing" the playing eleven, is bound to take a hit and he will be forced to ring in changes.
KKR so far has been cashing in on their top-order with Sunil Narine's hit-and-miss experiment at the top.
When Narine gets going, there is no stopping KKR as more often than not Gambhir and Uthappa have capitalised on the starts.
But in the event of a failure of the trio, the likes of Manish Pandey, Yusuf Pathan must take up responsibility.
Pandey has been in form and needs someone to lend support but KKR have struggled so far at number 6 and 7, the most crucial positions in a limited overs format.
Be it Sheldon Jackson or Suryakumar Yadav, none has delivered and has been a big letdown for KKR and Jharkhand's Ishank Jaggi might just get a look-in.
Colin de Grandhomme too has failed to make any big impact as Gambhir may tinker with their overseas line-up as well.
Shakib Al Hasan has been sparsely used this season with solitary appearance and it's high time that Gambhir must start trusting the star Bangladeshi all-rounder before he returns home for national duty.
Pune, on the other hand, are on the ascent from the bottom-half of the table and now find themselves placed securely in top four with a four-point lead over fifth-placed Kings XI Punjab.
Million-dollar Ben Stokes proved his worth with the bat when he hit his maiden Twenty20 century (103 off 63 balls) with less than three weeks to go for the final.
IPL's costliest player, Stokes, led a 162-run chase while batting at number five in a one-man show against Gujarat Lions in their last game.
Their top-order read 4-6-4-0 with the team 42/4 inside powerplay but Stokes' calculated innings sealed a thrilling chase in the penultimate delivery.
All eyes will once again be on India's most successful Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has shown that he is still in his prime when he led a 177 chase with an unbeaten 61 against Sunrisers.
Dhoni also contributed with a valuable 26 in their match-winning fifth wicket partnership worth 76 runs. His fans in Kolkata will also want him to do well but at the same time will want KKR to back on winning track and seal the play-off berth.
Teams:
Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (capt), Darren Bravo, Yusuf Pathan, Sunil Narine, Robin Uthappa and Umesh Yadav, Suryakumar Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Trent Boult, Piyush Chawla, Nathan Coulter Nile, Colin De Grandhomme, Rishi Dhawan, Sayan Ghosh, Shaikb-Al-Hasan, Sheldon Jackson, Ishank Jaggi, Kuldeep Yadav, Chris Woakes, Chris Lynn, Manish Pandey.
Rising Pune Supergiant: Steve Smith (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ashok Dinda, Mayank Agarwal, Faf du Plessis, Ankit Sharma, Baba Aparajith, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Deepak Chahar, Rahul Chahar, Dan Christian, Lockie Ferguson, Imran Tahir, Jaskaran Singh, Usman Khawaja, Saurabh Kumar, Ben Stokes, Washington Sundar, Milind Tandon, Manoj Tiwary, Adam Zampa, Jaydev Unadkat, Ishwar Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Shardul Thakur.
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