Two-time winners, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), got a big boost when Jason Roy from England and Litton Das from Bangladesh were finally able to play in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 match on Friday against the Sunrisers Hyderabad at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens. Roy was hired for Rs 2.8 crore to replace Shreyas Iyer as captain, who can’t play for the rest of the season.
Even though they have had medical problems, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s KKR team has won two close games in the IPL 2023, and adding Roy and Das will help them. It’s still being determined if Roy will play his first game for KKR on Friday night since he could replace Rahmanullah Gurbaz at the top of the order. If Gurbaz is left off the team, N. Jagadeesan can take over as wicketkeeper.
The other three foreign players for KKR are likely to be Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, and Lockie Ferguson. On the other hand, SRH’s last game started with England’s Harry Brook batting first, and they are expected to do the same against KKR.
Heinrich Klaasen has been in great form with the bat recently, and Aiden Markram’s team would like to have him take wickets as well. Other than these three, Marco Jansen could stay on the team as the fourth foreign player.
Regarding the “impact player” part, KKR can use young leg-spinner Suyash Sharma again because of how well he played in the first two games. If they are playing second, Venkatesh Iyer can replace Suyash.
If SRH bats second, they will try to use Abdul Samad as their “impact player.” Samad can replace one of the bowlers if SRH bats second.
Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad Predicted Playing 11
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk)/Jason Roy, N Jagadeesan, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana (c), Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Shardul Thakur, Sunil Narine, Lockie Ferguson, Umesh Yadav, and Varun Chakravarthy.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Mayank Agarwal, Harry Brook, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram (c), Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Washington Sundar, Marco Jansen, Mayank Markande, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umran Malik/ T Natrajan
