Lucknow Super Giants’ quest for a third consecutive IPL playoff berth continues as it hosts fellow top-four contender Kolkata Knight Riders at the Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow on May 5.
Third-placed LSG will be the fresher of the two teams, having had a five-day break since its home win against Mumbai Indians.
The turnaround is much sharper for KKR, which ground out a rare away win against MI on Friday to move to second in the standings.
Sunday’s match-up between LSG and KKR will be a clash of contrasting approaches to T20 cricket. While the away side has adopted the high-risk, high-reward aggressive batting strategy, the home team has stuck to its relatively conservative template.
Super Giants’ relative languidness with the bat though has been enabled by its miserly bowling unit.
Super Giants will be without pacer Mayank Yadav, who is likely to miss the rest of the season due to an injury, as confirmed by head coach Justin Langer.
LSG’s frugality with the ball though has been helmed by its spin attack led by left-arm spinner Krunal Pandya and leggie Ravi Bishnoi.
KKR’s Sunil Narine has relished an incredible season with the bat and ball. Alongside Phil Salt at the top of the order, Narine has also strung together a prolific partnership.
Having already stumbled to KKR earlier in the season LSG will look out to avoid an encore, with a top-two finish well within its reach.
Teams (from):
Lucknow Super Giants: Quinton de Kock, KL Rahul (c & wk), Deepak Hooda, Ayush Badoni, Marcus Stoinis, Nicholas Pooran (wk), Krunal Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohsin Khan, Shamar Joseph, Yash Thakur, Manimaran Siddharth, Prerak Mankad, Arshad Khan, Krishnappa Gowtham, Amit Mishra, Kyle Mayers, Ashton Turner, Matt Henry, Naveen-ul-Haq, Devdutt Padikkal, Yudhvir Singh Charak, Mayank Yadav, Arshin Kulkarni.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar, Phil Salt.
Match starts 7:30pm IST.
