Match details

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR; 2nd place) vs Delhi Capitals (DC; 5th place)
Eden Gardens, Kolkata, 7.30pm IST (2pm GMT)

Big Picture - Another six-hitting fest on the cards?

Two batting powerhouses, on a rampage in the recent matches, clashing at a venue where scores of 200 have been breached in eight of the ten innings in IPL 2024. Can anything but a high-scoring affair be expected?

KKR have gone past 220 in each of their last three games; DC have breached the 220 mark twice in three outings, with the other score being 199. While KKR have a scoring rate of 11.18 in the powerplay this season, DC are next in line at 10.41. And that's down to the openers from both teams.

Form guide: DC on a roll

KKR LWLWL (last five matches, most recent first)
DC WWLWW

Previous meeting in IPL 2024

Team news and impact player strategy

Rasikh Salam has been making the impact as the Impact Player in the last two games and DC are expected to continue with him.

Probable XII: 1 Prithvi Shaw/Abishek Porel, 2 Jake Fraser-McGurk, 3 Shai Hope, 4 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), 5 Tristan Stubbs, 6 Abishek Porel/Kumar Kushagra, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Kuldeep Yadav, 9 Lizaad Williams, 10 Mukesh Kumar, 11 Khaleel Ahmed, 12 Rasikh Salam

Kolkata Knight Riders: Mitchell Starc missed KKR's previous game with a finger injury and it's unclear whether he is fit yet. If he does make it, he is likely to come back in place of Dushmantha Chameera. Anukul Roy and Venkatesh Iyer were the Impact swaps in KKR's previous game. There is a chance, KKR could go with either Anukul or Suyash Sharma as their impact sub. Depending on the surface, they could also go for Vaibhav Arora as one of the options.

Probable XII: 1 Phil Salt, 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Angkrish Raghuvanshi, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 Venkatesh Iyer, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Andre Russell, 8 Ramandeep Singh, 9 Dushmantha Chameera/Mitchell Starc, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Harshit Rana 12 Anukul Roy/Suyash Sharma

In the spotlight: Jake Fraser-McGurk and Sunil Narine

It's not just the volume of runs that the Jake Fraser-McGurk has scored this year, but also how he has scored them. Among openers who've scored at least 100 runs in the powerplay this season, Fraser-McGurk's strike rate of 252.08 is the highest. He has already struck 22 sixes in IPL 2024, climbing to joint-fifth on the list in just five innings. Fraser-McGurk is just coming off a 27-ball 84 against Mumbai Indians and will want to continue in the same vein.

At 35, Sunil Narine is truly living up to the definition of an allrounder. No other KKR batter has more runs than Narine's 357 in IPL 2024. No other KKR bowler has more wickets than Narine's ten in IPL 2024. He is going at an economy of 6.96 this season, with the second-best being Arora's 9.57 and has picked up at least a wicket in every game. In KKR's previous game, where PBKS chased down 261 in the 19th over, Narine went at an economy of 6. KKR will desperately hope for the Narine magic to continue for as long as possible.

Pitch and conditions

Runs have flowed at Eden Gardens this year, and that's unlikely to change. Teams have opted to bowl in each of the five games so far, with dew often making its presence felt later in the night. There is an excessive heat warning in Kolkata with the temperature hovering around the 40 degree mark during the day. The humidity will play a major factor.

Stats that matter

Quotes

"If you look at the bowling side, they are coming out with so many variations. They have been trying but still they have been hit. Now, that is the only challenge. It is very hard for the bowlers to go in the middle and bowl."

KKR coach Chandrakant Pandit on what has been a batter-dominated tournament so far