LUCKNOW: Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) won the toss and elected to field first against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Match 54 of the Indian Premier League at the Ekana Cricket Stadium here on Sunday. Yash Thakur comes in for injured Mayank Yadav for LSG, whereas for KKR Harshit Rana comes in for Vaibhav Arora.
Lucknow Super Giants' captain K.L. Rahul said, “We will bowl first. I'm not the best reader of a wicket, we just like chasing. The good thing is we have been able to adapt really well and quickly to the conditions, there have been quite a few brilliant individual performances as well. There's been a lot of talk about strike-rate, and T20 cricket has changed a lot in the last couple of years. He was injured in the last game, Yash Thakur comes in for Mayank Yadav.”
Kolkata Knight Riders captain Shreyas Iyer said, “We would have bowled as well. Defending that total with five bowlers in the last game gives us a lot of confidence. There's a lot of self-belief in the team. We are going with the same team. Hopefully, we continue with the same form. He has been optimistic from game one and just that he wasn't able to execute. He (Venkatesh Iyer) got tremendous and character and was happy with the way he executed. It's important to stay in the present."
Playing XIs:
Kolkata Knight Riders: Philip Salt (wk), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Shreyas Iyer (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana
Substitutes: Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, KS Bharat, Sherfane Rutherford
Lucknow Super Giants: KL Rahul (wk/c), Marcus Stoinis, Deepak Hooda, Nicholas Pooran, Ashton Turner, Ayush Badoni, Krunal Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi, Naveen-ul-Haq, Mohsin Khan, Yash Thakur
Substitutes: Arshin Kulkarni, Manimaran Siddharth, Krishnappa Gowtham, Yudhvir Singh, Devdutt Padikkal