Kolkata Knight Riders made a bold decision to drop Quinton de Kock and Anrich Nortje from their playing XI against Gujarat Titans on April 21 at the iconic Eden Gardens. The defending champions suffered an embarrassing defeat to Punjab Kings in their previous match and it’s arguably for the same reason that the team management decided to shake things up and drop inconsistent Quinton for Afghanistan opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz.
The decision to bring back Moeen Ali is extremely tactical. The surface at Eden Gardens is expected to help the spinners and Ali has a good record for KKR this season. He also gives cushion with the bat, which the Ajinkya Rahane-led side loves. Meanwhile, Angkrish Raghuvanshi has been named in the Impact Player list and he is very likely to come in place of Vaibhav Arora in the second innings.
“We are going to bowl first. Slightly on the drier side, when we bowl, we'll get an idea how it's playing. This is generally a chasing ground. We spoke after the last game. All the players are working really hard. We've made some errors but it's all about being positive. We are at number 7 now, the motivation for each and everyone is to go up the ladder as a team. Really positive about all the players. Not too worried about middle-order I feel 5, 6, 7 sometimes is a tricky position to bat but when it works well it really looks well. Couple of changes. Gurbaz comes in and Moeen Ali comes in as well,” Rahane said after the toss.
Gujarat, on the other hand, have brought in Washington Sundar to the playing XI. The all-rounder has done well in the limited opportunities but despite so, he hasn’t featured regularly. Since the surface is expected to support the spinners, Washington has been called up.
KKR vs GT Playing XI:
Gujarat Titans (Playing XI): Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Sherfane Rutherford, Rahul Tewatia, Washington Sundar, Shahrukh Khan, Rashid Khan, Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Moeen Ali, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy