Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) faced each other in the ninth match of IPL 2023. While KKR came into this game on the back of a loss at the hands of Punjab Kings, RCB came confident having won comfortably against MI in their opening game of the season. A lot of superstars were set to brace the field in this encounter, however, an interesting incident at the toss hogged all the limelight ahead of the game.
Nitish Rana, the KKR skipper, seemed evidently miffed at the Match referee who created the confusion over who won the toss. Faf du Plessis had called heads as the coin was flipped in the air, but the referee Shakti Singh felt that KKR won the toss.
In the meantime, Sanjay Manjrekar cleared all the confusion stating that it was the RCB captain who had called it correctly. However, Nitish Rana didn't seem too happy with the proceedings and was evidently miffed with toss playing a crucial role at the venue.
Here's the video:
KKR made one change to their playing XI bringing in Venkatesh Iyer while naming debutant Suyash Sharma as their impact player. RCB were forced to make one change as Reece Topley missed out after dislocating his shoulder and David Willey replaced him. Notably, Topley has been ruled out of the entire tournament, RCB head coach Sanjay Bangar informed during the match.
Playing XIs
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Mandeep Singh, Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Shardul Thakur, Sunil Narine, Tim Southee, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy
Royal Challengers Bangalore (Playing XI): Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis(c), Glenn Maxwell, Michael Bracewell, Dinesh Karthik(w), Shahbaz Ahmed, David Willey, Karn Sharma, Harshal Patel, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj
