KKR yearns to continue dominance over RR to keep hopes of entering finals

There is an interesting tale surrounding the two rival captains of today’s ‘Eliminator’ match in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 cricket championships to be played tonight between hosts Kolkata Knightriders (KKR) and Rajasthan Royals (RR).

KKR’s captain Dinesh Karthik fills up in the national team for ODIs or T20s for regular ‘keeper-batsman M.S. Dhoni whenever is rested (during minor tournaments) and is struggling to find a permanent place in the Indian Test XI; similarly, Ajinkya Rahane, probably one of the very few Indian batsmen who have scored more hundreds abroad than at home, is struggling to seal his spot in India’s ODI and T20 teams.

These things, however, would hardly cross the minds of Karthik and Rahane as they walk out for the all-important toss tonight at the cricket-frenzy Eden Gardens, an epic cricket ground which had yielded many significant wins to the national side.  Their only motive would be to win today’s knock-out match as the loser gets eliminated from playing further in the tournament while the winner gets to meet Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Friday at the same venue in what can be termed as the ‘second semi-final’.

Thanks to its nail-biting yet convincing victory over SRH yesterday, the rampaging CSK has already marched into Sunday’s (May 27) final.  It now awaits the winner of Friday’s match to lock horns with it in the grand finale at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on Sunday night.  The equation is simple: to win the trophy , CSK needs one more win, SRH needs 2 more wins (Friday and Sunday) while other contenders KKR and/or RR needs 3 wins including today’s match and the second semi-final and final!

KKR must be obviously feeling high at least on two counts: first, it plays a very big match on its home turf and secondly, it had already beaten RR twice in the league stages of the tournament – both at Jaipur and at Kolkata by convincing margins.  This should give KKR an upper-hand going into today’s match as it has an all-round team which is good in batting, bowling and fielding departments.

On the other hand, RR is hit hard by the absence of Jos Butler and Ben Stokes, who have since left for England to play Test cricket against Pakistan.  Though Stokes, the highest-paid player in this year’s IPL, didn’t do much of note till now, Butler had been in the thick of action, scoring 548 runs in 13 matches at an average of 54.80 and giving RR tremendous opening partnerships.  For RR to have a chance of winning tonight, it’s openers Rahul Tripathy and Ajinkya Rahane should fire and should be backed up by the likes of Sanju Samson and Klassen.  Its bowling looks like a well-oiled unit with Gowtham, Gopal, Sodhi and Unadkat coming to the party in its last few victories.

KKR is always a very strong side to contend with in home conditions and its batting stars like Sunil Narine, Lynn, Uthappa, Karthik, Russel, Shubman Gill and Nitish Rana are quite capable of delivering the goods at any venue and against any (kind of) opposition.  It also has a lethal bowling line-up of Russel, Prasidh Krishna and the trio of spinners in Piyush Chawla, Sunil Narine and Kuldeep Yadav.

In all, it would be a very tough match for both the teams as RR won’t like to get the chance of playing in the play-offs (it qualified mainly because of Mumbai Indians’ unexpected loss to Delhi Daredevils in their last league match) go by that easily.  Expect a humdinger for sure!

Players to look for:

KKR: Sunil Narine, Uthappa, Karthik, Kuldeep Yadav
RR: Rahane, Rahul Tripathi, Gowtham, Gopal, Jaydev Unadkat