Shaky Kolkata and Chennai will face each other to go ahead in the points table in Indian T20 League 2020.
Match Timings: Oct 07, 7:30 PM
Team Preview
Kolkata is ready for the Chennai task after a narrow defeat to Delhi in a high-scoring thriller at Sharjah. The purple outfit has so many questions. Narine is completely wasted in the opening slot and the management could try Tripathi with Gill. Tom Banton is another option but then Kolkata have to find the 5th bowling option but Russell’s success with the ball solves this issue. Karthik’s captaincy is below average this season and his decisions are surprising the fans. Morgan again batted at down-order and when he came, the damage was already done. He even tried to pull off a great chase but it wasn’t enough. The skipper is making unwanted changes in the batting order. Will Morgan bat at 4 or Karthik will push him at 6 or 7? McCullum needs to find the answer before the points table scares them. Changes are expected on Wednesday. It might be in the playing XI or in the batting order.
Meanwhile, Chennai got their confidence back after a thumping victory of 10 wickets over Punjab. After losing three back-to-back games, Dhoni backed their side and made no changes. Faf and Watson both put a record stand of 181 to add two important points for the yellow army. Chennai still needs to fix some errors to find the ultimate rhythm. With 2 wins out of five isn’t a big achievement and one more defeat will again push Chennai to bottom two. Dhoni is in no mood to make any change for Kolkata. Bowling would still be a concern as they haven’t created an impact in the last few games.
Pitch Report
Abu Dhabi’s surface is a good batting-friendly wicket. It offers plenty of runs as the ball come to the bat very well. Spinners might control the game in middle-overs. Batting first would be an ideal call to put pressure on chasing side with some extra spin.
Possible XI
Chennai
Shane Watson, Ambati Rayudu, Faf du Plessis, MS Dhoni (c & wk), Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo, Sam Curran, Shardul Thakur, Piyush Chawla, Deepak Chahar
Kolkata
Rahul Tripathi/Tom Banton, Shubman Gill, Sunil Narine/Kuldeep Yadav, Nitish Rana, Dinesh Karthik (c & wk), Andre Russell, Eoin Morgan, Pat Cummins, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shivam Mavi, Varun Chakravarthy
Key Players
Kolkata
Eoin Morgan
Season so far – M: 4, Runs: 136, Avg: 68
Shubman Gill
Season so far – M: 4, Runs: 152, Avg: 50.67
Chennai
Faf du Plessis
Season so far – M: 5, Runs: 282, Avg: 94
Shane Watson
Previous outing – 83 (53)
