Kolkata Knight Riders and Royals Challengers Bangalore are heading into Match No. 9 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 with major injury concerns on their plate. While home side KKR have to deal with the absence of Shreyas Iyer (due to injury) and Shakib al Hasan (pulling out due to personal reason), the visiting side RCB will miss the services to pace bowlers Josh Hazlewood and Reece Topley as IPL returns to iconic Eden Gardens stadium on Thursday.


COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

KKR skipper Nitish Rana may choose to go with the same side which lost the opening IPL 2023 match against Punjab Kings by 7 runs (DLS method) against Faf du Plessis-led RCB as well. Although, they have replaced Shreyas Iyer with England batter Jason Roy, but he is unlikely to join the team before their next match in Ahmedabad.


RCB, on the other hand, will look to replace Topley with English teammate David Willey. Topley, who was bought for Rs 1.9 crore by RCB at the IPL 2023 auction as a backup for Hazlewood, dislocated his shoulder while fielding in their opening match against Mumbai Indians in Bengaluru.


Willey will be like-for-like replacement for Topley as he is a left-arm pacer as well and a more than handy batter lower down the order. RCB didn’t use the ‘Impact Player’ option in their first match against MI – which they won by eight wickets. They can bring in Suyash Prabhudesai or Anuj Rawat to replace Akash Deep or Mohammed Siraj if they are batting second.


KKR, on the other hand, may choose to replace Shardul Thakur with Kulwant Khejroliya after the former leaked 43 runs in the opening IPL 2023 game. They might choose to use Venkatesh Iyer as the ‘Impact Player’ once again if they are batting second, replacing Varun Chakravarthy once again.



Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bangalore Predicted Playing 11


Kolkata Knight Riders: Mandeep Singh, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Anukul Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana (c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur/Kulwant Khejroliya, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee


Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf du Plessis (c), Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, Michael Bracewell, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Suyash Prabhudessai, Shahbaz Ahmed, Harshal Patel, Akash Deep, David Willey, Karn Sharma