IPL 2023: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bangalore – Dafanews Match Preview

Kolkata Knight Riders will take on Royal Challengers Bangalore at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Thursday. KKR lost their opening match against Punjab Kings whereas RCB won their first match against Mumbai Indians convincingly by eight wickets.

We look at the current form, head-to-head, players to look out for, and squads of both teams in our match preview.

Last match result of KKR: Loss against PBKS

KKR’s batters will have to take the onus on their shoulders as they could not get going in their batting innings. Shreyas Iyer and Shakib Al Hasan have been ruled out whereas Jason Roy has been added to the squad. KKR will have to come up with a collective effort against RCB and their batters will need to step up.

Last match result of RCB: Win against MI

RCB had ticked the right boxes with both bat and ball in the opening match against MI. The fast bowlers were right on the money whereas Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis scored 82 and 73 runs respectively to help their team win convincingly by eight wickets.

Head to Head: Matches: 31, Won by KKR: 17, Won by RCB: 14.

KKR holds an H2H advantage against RCB.

Players to watch out for: Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell, Wanindu Hasaranga, Mohammad Siraj, and Dinesh Karthik will hold the key for RCB.

Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Nitish Rana, Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, David Wiese, and Venkatesh Iyer are going to hold the key for KKR.

RCB IPL 2023 SQUAD

Wicketkeepers: Anuj Rawat, Dinesh Karthik.

Batters: Faf du Plessis (SA), Finn Allen (NZ), Virat Kohli, Suyash Prabhudessai, Will Jacks (ENG).

All-rounders: Wanindu Hasaranga (SL), Mahipal Lomror, Glenn Maxwell (AUS), Shahbaz Ahmed, Sonu Yadav, Manoj Bhandage.

Bowlers: Akash Deep, Josh Hazlewood (AUS), Siddarth Kaul, Mohammed Siraj, Harshal Patel, Karn Sharma, David Willey (ENG), Avinash Singh, Rajan Kumar, Reece Topley (ENG), Himanshu Sharma.

KKR IPL 2023 SQUAD

Wicketkeepers: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (AFG), N. Jagadeesan, Litton Das (BAN).

Batters: Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Mandeep Singh, Jason Roy.

All-rounders: Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Andre Russel (WI), Shardul Thakur, David Wiese (NAM).

Bowlers: Lockie Ferguson (NZ), Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine (WI), Tim Southee (NZ), Varun Chakravarthy, Umesh Yadav, Suyash Sharma, Vaibhav Arora, Kulwant Khejroliya.