Kolkata Knight Riders will take to the field for the first time this season in the Dream11 IPL as they face the Mumbai Indians at Abu Dhabi later today.

KKR captain Dinesh Karthik would have been really pleased to know that both Pat Cummins and Eoin Morgan will be available for their season opener against Mumbai. The two players were recently involved in the T20I and ODI series between England and Australia. KKR fans will also be delighted to know that their young fast-bowler Kamlesh Nagarkoti will be fit and available for this match. The highly rated 20 year-old was picked up by the KKR franchise back in 2018 after his impressive performance for India at the U-19 World Cup that year, however he has not been able to feature since due to unfortunate luck with injuries.

Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma would be looking for his side to put in a much improved performance from their loss against CSK at the opening night. Saurabh Tiwary was a huge plus for Mumbai that evening and he will be looking to emulate his last performance in this match as well. Nathan Coulter-Nile will be back available for this game, however with the impressive performance by James Pattinson against CSK it looks very unlikely that Rohit Sharma might tinker with his starting XI for the second match.

Important Stats:

  • KKR versus MI is one of the most entertaining fixtures of the IPL. Mumbai have won 19 of their 25 matches against KKR, with the Knight Riders victorious only six times. Mumbai’s win percentage of 76 is the best among any two teams in the IPL. However, the only time the two teams met in Abu Dhabi, the Knight Riders won, back in 2014.
  • Mumbai, are on a six-match losing streak in the UAE, having lost five out of five in the country in 2014 to go with their opening game loss against CSK this season.
  • This will be Kieron Pollard’s 150th match in the IPL.

Predicted Lineups

Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Shubman Gill, 2. Sunil Narine, 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Eoin Morgan, 5 Dinesh Karthik (capt, wk), 6 Andre Russell, 7 Rahul Tripathi/Rinku Singh, 8 Pat Cummins, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Kamlesh Nagarkoti, 11 Prasidh Krishna

Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Saurabh Tiwary, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 James Pattinson/Nathan Coulter-Nile, 9 Rahul Chahar, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

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TOPICS: KKR Mumbai Indians