On Bengali New Year’s day, the Kolkata Knight Riders will hope to give their fans more to cheer about as they take on the Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Eden Gardens on Saturday afternoon. The Knight Riders have had an up-and-down three matches so far. While their batting has mostly looked good, the bowling and fielding standards have not been up to standard.

Defending champions Hyderabad were brought down to earth by the Mumbai Indians after not being able to defend 158 at the Wankhede on Wednesday. David Warner still looks in good touch and will want his team to get back to winning ways against KKR.

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Time: 4 pm

Venue: Eden Gardens, Kolkata

TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD channels

Results in 2016

Played: 3

Hyderabad won: 1

Kolkata won: 2

Kolkata Knight Riders

  • Sunil Narine is the player to look out for, with both bat and ball. He retains his miserliness with the ball, conceding only 1/22 and 1/19 in his last two matches. And he surprised quite a few with his 18-ball 37 as an opener in KKR’s eight-wicket win over Punjab on Wednesday.
  • The captain Gautam Gambhir is the currently highest run-getter this tournament with 167 runs in three matches.
  • Yet despite Narine’s bowling, KKR will want to work on their bowling and fielding abilities. They’ve dropped too many catches in their last three matches and even their death bowling has been suspect. 
  • Gautam Gambhir’s team have won all their four matches against Hyderabad at the Eden Gardens.

“His [Narine’s] nickname is ‘all-rounder’ now.”

Simon Katich, KKR assistant coach

Squad: Gautam Gambhir (captain), Robin Uthappa (wicket-keeper), Darren Bravo, Ishank Jaggi, Manish Pandey, Yusuf Pathan, Chris Lynn, Suryakumar Yadav, Sheldon Jackson (wicket-keeper), Chris Woakes, Rishi Dhawan, Sanjay Yadav, Rovman Powell, Shakib Al Hasan, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Trent Boult, Sayan Ghosh, Piyush Chawla, Umesh Yadav, Sunil Narine, Kuldeep Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Colin de Grandhomme (as replacement for Andre Russell)

Sunrisers Hyderabad

  • Mustafizur Rahman didn’t have the greatest of returns to the IPL, being hammered for 19 runs in his first over against the Mumbai Indians.
  • Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the current joint-highest wicket-taker in the tournament with  seven wickets in three games, closely followed by Rashid Khan who has six. 

“I was not able to pitch in the right areas in Mumbai.”

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Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Mustafizur Rahman

Squad: David Warner (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Kane Williamson, Ricky Bhui, Yuvraj Singh, Moises Henriques, Chris Jordan, Abhimanyu Mithun, Barinder Singh Sran, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Naman Ojha (wicket-keeper), Eklavya Dwivedi (wicketkeeper), Tanmay Agarwal, Mustafizur Rahman, Siddarth Kaul, Ben Laughlin, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammed Siraj, Rashid Khan, Pravin Tambe, Ben Cutting, Bipul Sharma, Vijay Shankar Deepak Hooda