IPL 2018: KKR and KXIP battle for top spot on points table

Kings XI Punjab KXIP IPL 2018

With top spot on the Indian Premier League (IPL) table up for grabs, Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) travel to Eden Gardens to take on a well balanced Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team.

All eyes will be on the West Indian stars tonight as KXIP with Chris Gayle and KKR with Andre Russell and Sunil Narine in their ranks, face off at the Eden Gardens. After marking his first start this season with a spectacular 63 run knock off just 33 balls, Gayle unleashed another ‘Gayle-storm’ against a hapless Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) bowling unit scoring 104 off 63 deliveries en route to his 6th IPL ton.

KKR who registered a comfortable win in their previous outing against the Rajasthan Royals will be looking to maintain their winning streak. The KKR spin attack boasting of Sunil Narine, Piyush Chawla, Kuldeep Yadav and Nitish Rana will have their work cut out against a strong KXIP batting line-up. While the KKR pace attack isn’t the strongest, youngsters Tom Curran and Shivam Mavi can still spring up a few surprises, especially when assisted by the experienced Andre Russell.

The game is going to be a battle of the captains with both Dinesh Karthik and Ravichandran Ashwin developing a reputation of being expert readers of the game. Ashwin surprised everyone by opting to bat first in their previous outing where his team registered a total of 193 cruising to a 15 run victory. Dinesh Karthik too has also proved his ability to adapt to the situation when he deployed his spinners to open the attack against the Royals in their previous outing which restricted the host to a modest total of just 160. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top in today’s battle of wits between the two captains.

Where: Eden Gardens, Kolkata.

Head to Head: Both teams have faced each other 22 times in the past with KKR having come out on top on 14 occasions.

A battle to watch out for:

Chris Gayle vs Sunil Narine – In the IPL, Narine has bowled a total of 45 deliveries to his West Indian teammate. Gayle has managed to score just 40 runs in all against Narine at a strike rate of 88.89, which is quite low as compared to the big man’s standards.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Chris Lynn, Sunil Narine, Robin Uthappa, Nitish Rana, Dinesh Karthik (capt & wk), Andre Russell, Shubman Gill, Piyush Chawla, Tom Curran, Shivam Mavi and Kuldeep Yadav

Kings XI Punjab: KL Rahul (wk), Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal, Karun Nair, Aaron Finch, Yuvraj Singh, R Ashwin (capt), Andrew Tye, Barinder Sran, Mohit Sharma and Mujeeb Zadran