Kolkata Knight Riders’ Varun Chakravarthy celebrates the wicket of Mumbai Indians’ Rohit Sharma during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 cricket match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians at the Eden Gardens, in Kolkata on May 11, 2024.
| Photo Credit: K.R Deepak

Varun Chakaravarthy’s ability to be consistently among wickets for Kolkata Knight Riders drew praise from former Australian tearaway bowler Brett Lee, who said he made life difficult for Mumbai Indians batters in a rain-shortened low-scoring game.

Chakaravarthy bowled miserly and took two wickets for 17 runs as KKR won by 18 runs to become the first team to seal an IPL playoff berth on Saturday.

Chakaravarthy (18 scalps) is the third-highest wicket-taker so far this season behind MI’s Jasprit Bumrah and PBKS’s Harshal Patel, both of whom are on 20 wickets.

“He bowled beautifully. He made efforts to pick the hard length, he banged the ball short in the wicket which did not allow the batsmen to get underneath the ball and made the cross-bat shots difficult,” Lee told JioCinema on Sunday.

Former Royal Challengers Bengaluru high-performance director Mike Hesson said KKR batter Venkatesh Iyer seems to be relishing punishing the Mumbai Indians bowlers.

Venkatesh has struck two half centuries this season and came close to striking a third before he was dismissed on 42 (21 balls) as he emerged the highest run-getter on both sides at the Eden Gardens on Saturday.

“He seems to love playing against Mumbai Indians. He got hit on the knee earlier but that did not seem to stop him. He timed everything beautifully, batted with a strike rate of over 200 and when everybody else was struggling because of the seaming ball, he played a match-winning hand,” said Hesson.

File picture of Kolkata Knight Riders players Sunil Narine and Andre Russell during a practice session ahead of an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 cricket match
| Photo Credit: K.R. DEEPAK

Kolkata Knight Riders will look to extend its recent run of success when it returns home after securing two emphatic away wins.

KKR hosts Mumbai Indians at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on May 11. The faceoff against MI assumes more significance as a victory will ensure a play-off spot for the Knight Riders.

The spate of success, highlighted by the fact that the team has won four of its last five outings, puts KKR on top of the league table with 16 points from 11 matches. This also makes it the favourite against the struggling MI, currently lying in the eighth spot (with eight points from 12 matches). MI is out of the race for a spot in the playoffs.

The opening partnership of Sunil Narine and Phil Salt has been a crucial factor in KKR’s consistent performance. Narine’s belligerence with the bat has been a key element in KKR amassing 200-plus totals in six of the eight innings where it has batted first.

Narine, who has scored 461 runs with a strike rate of 183.67, is in exceptional form that has propelled him as the team’s most successful all-rounder. As a bowler, which is his primary vocation, Narine has been outstanding with an economy rate of 6.61.

Salt, having scored 429 runs with a strike rate of 183.33, has proved to be the right companion for Narine. KKR, which beat MI by 24 runs at the Wankhede Stadium, will be banking on its key players to come good again.

Teams

Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar and Phil Salt.

Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (wk), Nehal Wadhera and Luke Wood.

Match starts: 7.30 p.m. on May 11, 2024

Kolkata Knight Riders will look to iron out their flaws and get the better of a mis-firing Mumbai Indians when the two teams, placed on the opposite ends of IPL points table spectrum, clash here on Friday.

With six wins in nine games giving them 12 points and the second position in the IPL points table, a berth in the playoffs looks within the grasp of two-time winners KKR.

But the Shreyas Iyer-led side will have to find consistency across departments and avoid any slip-ups in order to make it to the final four.

Each of their three losses have come in the last six games for KKR, who were at the receiving end of a record run chase by Punjab Kings but did well to bounce back with a seven-wicket thrashing of Delhi Capitals.

With the bat, KKR’s requisite firepower in the ranks entwined with an ultra-aggressive approach has delivered the goods more often than not but it is their bowling which needs improvement.

Mitchell Starc has given nearly 12 runs an over while managing a mere seven wickets in eight outings. On flat, batting-friendly pitches, the lanky Australian’s lack of control has also been exploited well by zealous batters.

Harshit Rana is among those with most wickets (11) for KKR this season but the right-arm seamer will serve a one-match ban for his animated celebrations after dismissing DC’s Abhishek Porel.

Vaibhav Arora’s nine scalps in five games make him KKR’s best bet with the ball. A small Wankhede Stadium with a batting-friendly wicket tends to encourage scores in excess of 200 and the team would be mindful of that.

Spotlight will also be on Rinku Singh, whose exclusion from India’s main squad for the T20 World Cup, has triggered an outpouring of sympathy for the 26-year-old. The power-hitter has not got enough game time this season which probably tilted the scales against him.

For Mumbai Indians, the race to the IPL playoffs seems lost even though the five-time winners have five more games to play.

Even if Mumbai Indians win each of these, they can only get to 16 points and somewhere in the middle of the points table — not necessarily challenging those who have been consistently good.

Jasprit Bumrah (14 wickets) and Gerald Coetzee (13) have been MI’s best bets with the ball but despite their impressive showing, the batters’ collective failure has resulted in the team’s underwhelming season.

Tilak Varma has been MI’s best batter with 343 runs, including three fifties this IPL, but his performances have not been enough to hide the failings of others.

Ishan Kishan has struck the ball well but severely lacks consistency at the top and losing wickets in heaps in the powerplay has been one of MI’s biggest woes in this season.

India skipper Rohit Sharma’s (315 runs at strike rate of 158.29) selfless approach with the bat has not given him big scores consistently but his form will be in focus given the T20 World Cup is now just one month away.

All eyes will also be on Suryakumar Yadav who has two fifties in seven IPL games this season, but it is not the consistency which is expected from the batter of his calibre.

Mumbai Indians’ under-fire skipper Hardik Pandya has neither dazzled with the ball nor the bat after a long injury lay-off. but the fact that he finds himself in the Indian side as vice-captain for the World Cup should motivate him to turn things around.

Teams (from)

Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (wk), Nehal Wadhera, Luke Wood.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar, Phil Salt.

Match starts 7:30pm IST.