Lucknow Super Giants have won the toss and have opted to field<\/b><\/p>\n
Ajinkya Rahane said his side would have preferred to bat first, stressing the need to judge conditions and focus on how the team is playing. He added that giving freedom to the batting group remains key, with the XI unchanged.<\/p>\n
Rishabh Pant confirmed they will bowl first, making one change with Linde replacing Siddharth. He said the side is close to finding solutions and remains confident of turning the season around with better execution.<\/p>\n
Matheesha Pathirana has linked up with Kolkata Knight Riders after recovering from a left calf strain picked up during the T20 World Cup. The INR 18 crore signing has cleared SLC fitness tests and received his NOC. He was seen warming up and training in full KKR kit, but has not been picked in the XI yet. The team appear to be holding him back as a precaution.<\/p>\n
Pitch Report \u2013<\/strong> Lucknow returns with another surface that points to a restrained total, with the venue averaging around 155 this season. The fresh black-soil pitch, being used for the first time, has visible cracks that could bring variable and lower bounce, making strokeplay difficult, especially for the side batting first.<\/p>\n Kolkata Knight Riders Playing XI: <\/strong>Ajinkya Rahane (c), Tim Seifert (wk), Cameron Green, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rovman Powell, Rinku Singh (vc), Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi<\/p>\n Lucknow Super Giants Playing XI: <\/strong>Aiden Markram, Mitchell Marsh, Rishabh Pant (c), Nicholas Pooran, Ayush Badoni, Mukul Choudhary, George Linde, Mohammed Shami, Prince Yadav, Digvesh Singh Rathi, Mohsin Khan<\/p>\n Impact Substitutes:<\/strong><\/p>\n Lucknow Super Giants: <\/strong>Himmat Singh, Akshat Raghuwanshi, Abdul Samad, Avesh Khan, M Siddharth<\/p>\n Kolkata Knight Riders: <\/strong>Manish Pandey, Finn Allen, Tejasvi Singh, Navdeep Saini, Varun Chakaravarthy<\/p>\n This game comes at a point where neither side can afford another slip. Lucknow Super Giants have two wins from seven, while Kolkata Knight Riders have just one. Both sit near the bottom and need a run now.<\/p>\n Their earlier meeting was close, decided by small moments. Lucknow\u2019s bowling looks steady, yet their overseas batters have not contributed enough so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lucknow Super Giants have won the toss and have opted to field Ajinkya Rahane said his side would have preferred\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":473,"featured_media":50415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ipl"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/473"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50414"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50422,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414\/revisions\/50422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Season on the line for both sides<\/h3>\n