Lucknow Super Giants captain Rishabh Pant won the toss and chose to bowl first against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens, with cloud cover hovering over the venue. The match had a weather history at the same ground: the teams had met there on April 6, only for that contest to be abandoned after 3.4 overs due to rain. On Thursday afternoon, showers returned briefly, but the conditions improved later, allowing the toss to go ahead at 7:00 pm IST as planned.
Faf du Plessis pointed out that the outfield had been slightly damp in the period leading up to the game.
LSG made no changes from their previous outing, where they defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad. KKR, meanwhile, brought back Sunil Narine, replacing Zimbabwe pacer Blessing Muzarabani. Narine had been ruled out of Monday’s match against Punjab Kings after falling ill, but he returned for this fixture. KKR’s other spin option, Varun Chakravarthy, was still not ready. Speaking before the toss, KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane said, “Varun is still recovering from his hand injury.”
Before the toss, Cameron Green tested his run-up, and Rahane commented on the impact of his availability: “When he is allowed to bowl, the combination becomes better”. Rovman Powell and Finn Allen were also included as the overseas players in KKR’s batting XI. Later in the evening, Vaibhav Arora was in the frame to feature as an Impact Player when KKR turn to bowling.
For LSG, Ayush Badoni is available as an Impact Player during their chase. LSG have also retained the option of bringing in Matthew Breetzke if required, after selecting only three overseas players in their bowl-first XI.
LSG bowl-first XI
- 1 Mitchell Marsh
- 2 Aiden Markram
- 3 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk)
- 4 Nicholas Pooran
- 5 Abdul Samad
- 6 Mukul Choudhary
- 7 M Siddharth
- 8 Avesh Khan
- 9 Mohammed Shami
- 10 Digvesh Rathi
- 11 Prince Yadav
Impact Subs bench: Ayush Badoni, Matthew Breetzke, Shahbaz Ahmad, Mayank Yadav, Himmat Singh
KKR bat-first XI
- 1 Finn Allen
- 2 Ajinkya Rahane (capt)
- 3 Cameron Green
- 4 Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk)
- 5 Rovman Powell
- 6 Rinku Singh
- 7 Ramandeep Singh
- 8 Sunil Narine
- 9 Anukul Roy
- 10 Navdeep Saini
- 11 Kartik Tyagi
KKR bench: Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Tejasvi Singh Dahiya, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert
