Toss Rajasthan Royals opt to bat vs Kolkata Knight Riders
Riyan Parag won the toss for Rajasthan Royals and decided to bat first on an excessively hot Kolkata afternoon. For a change, both sides wanted to bat first. It possibly had to do with more than just the conditions; Kolkata Knight Riders have struggled when chasing and RR also were bundled out in a chase in their last match.
After leaving Shimron Hetmyer out for the last match, RR reverted to the old combination. It meant Lhuan-dre Pretorius had to sit out. Right-arm quick Briijesh Sharma replaced Tushar Deshpande, who went for 55 runs in the last match.
KKR, still searching their first win after six matches into the season, didn’t make any changes to their playing group.
The decision at the toss meant we would get to watch Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Yashasvi Jaiswal in earnest. April 19 was exactly a year since Sooryavanshi made his IPL debut with a first-ball six off Shardul Thakur. Two matches later he blasted a 35-ball century against Delhi Capitals.
Rajasthan Royals: 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 3 Dhruv Jurel (wk), 4 Riyan Parag (capt.), 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Donovan Ferreira, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Nandre Burger, 11 Brijesh Sharma
RR bench: Sandeep Sharma, Shubham Dubey, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Ravi Singh, Yash Punja
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Ajinkya Rahane (capt.), 2 Tim Seifert (wk), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Rovman Powell, 5 Rinku Singh, 6 Anukul Roy, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Kartik Tyagi, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Vaibhav Arora
KKR bench: Manish Pandey, Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Tejasvi Singh, Navdeep Saini
