Rajasthan Royals (RR) captain Sanju Samson won the toss and opted to field first against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 match here at Eden Gardens on Thursday.
KKR are in the sixth spot in the points table with five wins and six losses. They have a total of 10 points. RR's campaign has suffered after some recent losses and they also have five wins and six losses. With a win, one of the two teams can climb as high as number three in the table and push behind Mumbai Indians, which currently have 12 points with six wins and five losses. KKR have won three of their previous five matches. On the other hand, RR have lost four of their last five games. "We will bowl here first. The long tournament, need to change according to the strength and weaknesses. A couple of changes for us - Boult replaces Kuldeep Yadav, and KM Asif replaces Murugan Ashwin. Joe Root will bat at 4. It's a long tournament, we have had some tough games for the bowlers, the morale of the team is high, not easy to forget close losses, but we need to move on," speaking at the time of toss Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson said. "I think we're getting the type of pitches we want. We will have to play good cricket, take one game at a time and earn 2 points. One change for us - Anukul Roy replaces Vaibhav Arora. Looks like the pitch is dry, they haven't watered a lot, so we are playing that extra spinner and adding some depth to the batting," KKR captain Nitish Rana said. Rajasthan Royals (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson(w/c), Joe Root, Dhruv Jurel, Shimron Hetmyer, Ravichandran Ashwin, Trent Boult, Sandeep Sharma, KM Asif and Yuzvendra Chahal. Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Jason Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Anukul Roy, Harshit Rana and Varun Chakaravarthy. (ANI)
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