Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) are facing the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at home on April 6 (Thursday). This is the team's first match at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata in this season and will be looking to earn two points from this game. They lost to Punjab Kings in their first game and will be hoping to make amends. However, they will be missing their skipper Shreyas Iyer with the bat as he has been ruled out of the entire IPL season with Nitish Rana being named as the captain.
Iyer was earlier skeptical to undergo surgery for his back injury that he sustained during the Ahmedabad Test between India and Australia. But recently it was confirmed that he will go under the knife and subsequently was ruled out of the entire IPL season. Perhaps, he is also ruled out of the World Test Championship Final (WTC) final against Australia that will be played in June. This makes it very clear that Shreyas Iyer is keen on getting fit for the ODI World Cup that is set to be played later this year in India.
Meanwhile, RCB won the toss in the game against KKR at Eden Gardens and opted to bowl first. Reece Topley missed the game after dislocating his shoulder with David Willey replacing him. On the other hand, KKR have dropped Anukul Roy from their playing XI with Suyash Sharma making his IPL debut. KKR will be hoping to post a good total on the board now and then defend it later in the evening.
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
