Toss Kolkata Knight Riders choose to bat vs Punjab Kings
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) were forced to make two big changes to their side as they opted to bat in their home game against the in-form Punjab Kings (PBKS). Varun Chakravarthy injured his hand while taking a catch in KKR’s previous game against SRH, while Sunil Narine was unwell, captain Ajinkya Rahane said at the toss.
The last time KKR played a match without either of their mystery spinners was back in 2019.
Rovman Powell comes into the side for his first match of the season, while fast bowler Navdeep Saini makes his KKR debut and will play his first IPL game since 2023, when he turned out for Rajasthan Royals. This means Anukul Roy is the only spinner in KKR’s starting XI, with no spinner among their Impact Player options.
Even though there was rain in the lead up to the game – which cancelled both teams’ training sessions on Sunday – Rahane said the pitch was slightly on the drier side; he said they wanted to put runs on the board first. The team batting first has won only three of the 11 games in IPL 2026 so far.
PBKS captain Shreyas Iyer said he wanted to bowl and he got what he wanted. His team went in unchanged, with Priyansh Arya once again expected to come off the Impact Player bench when they begin their chase.
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Finn Allen, 2 Ajinkya Rahane (capt), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Angkrish Raghuvanshi, 5 Rovman Powell, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Anukul Roy, 9 Navdeep Saini, 10 Vaibhav Arora, 11 Kartik Tyagi.
Impact Player bench: Manish Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Blessing Muzarabani, Tejasvi Singh, Saurabh Dubey.
Punjab Kings: 1 Prabhsimran Singh (wk), 2 Cooper Connolly, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Nehal Wadhera, 5 Shashank Singh, 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Xavier Bartlett, 9 Vijaykumar Vyshak, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal.
Impact Player bench: Suryansh Shedge, Vishnu Vinod, Pravin Dubey, Priyansh Arya, Harpreet Brar.
