The State of Play
Buoyed by a 106-run win over the Delhi Capitals, including 85 off 39 balls for Sunil Narine, second-placed Kolkata Knight Riders are seeking a fourth win from four IPL 2024 matches when they visit the Chennai Super Kings on Monday.
Narine picked up his second successive player of the match award, having also struck 47 off 22 in their seven-wicket preceding win against Royal Challengers Bangalore, while Andre Russell shone in their opening four-run victory at home to Sunrisers Hyderabad, recording an unbeaten 64 and taking 2/25 with the ball.
“We’ll go out there and try to have a positive intent,” said all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer, who top-scored with 50 against RCB.
“The result is never in our hands but the performance and effort are. We’ll try to keep that intensity high.”
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CSK are chasing a comeback after losing two in a row. The reigning champions beat RCB by six wickets and Gujarat Titans by 63 runs in their opening two games, only to lose by 20 runs at DC and six wickets at home to SRH on Friday.
Ravindra Jadeja has an IPL economy of 6.86 in Chennai across 30 wickets, but an improvement in their batting looks more of a concern, with Shivam Dube the only player to top 50 so far by scoring 51 against the Titans.
⏪ to Mighty Roars V KKR 💥⚡#CSKvKKR #WhistlePodu🦁💛 pic.twitter.com/tQ5FAhHxRz
— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) April 7, 2024
“We didn’t have a great Powerplay, with one dropped catch and one expensive over,” captain Ruturaj Gaikwad said after his side’s second defeat.
“Still, I feel to have dragged the game until the 18th over was a great effort. We were pretty much in a good situation at 80/2 at the halfway stage but they came back and bowled really well at the back end.”
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Expected line-ups
Chennai Super Kings: Ruturaj Gaikwad (c), Rachin Ravindra, Ajinkya Rahane, Shivam Dube, Sameer Rizvi, Moeen Ali, Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni (wk), Deepak Chahar, Tushar Deshpande, Mustafizur Rahman
Kolkata Knight Riders: Phil Salt (wk), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana
How to watch
Sky have the rights to show the IPL to UK viewers in 2024 and will broadcast every game live.
Sunday’s match will be shown on Sky Sports Cricket from 2.50pm BST.
In India, the games can be streamed on the Jio Cinema app and website. They are also available across the Star Sports Network.
Focus mode 🔛 before the Chennai challenge! 🎯 pic.twitter.com/acNSyB3igK
— KolkataKnightRiders (@KKRiders) April 7, 2024
Prediction
CSK are something of a bogey side for KKR, winning 18 of the 29 IPL matches between the teams and five of the last seven games encounters.
With the likes of MS Dhoni and Moeen Ali among their opponents’ ranks, this could be the contest in which KKR’s perfect start ends.
If KKR are to carry on their excellent start, though, they could be helped by the expected absence of CSK’s Mustafizur Rahman, who has returned to Bangladesh to carry out visa formalities for the T20 World Cup and missed their defeat to SRH. Rahman’s seven wickets were still the second-most in the IPL before Sunday’s play began.
Russell and Harshit Rana have taken five each for KKR, with Varun Chakravarthy on four.
