Nitish Rana: “The result wasn’t in our favour, but there are a lot of positives from the season. Hopefully we come back as a better team. You have to win back to back, and I feel bad since we had the ability finish games off. Looks like I have spoken Rinku all 14 times that I have held the mic after a match! I really don’t have words to define him. If he can bat that way in that situation, then he can do anything!”
Krunal Pandya: “Very happy… we never gave up. At one stage they were 61 for 1, and we felt just two or three tight overs can change the state of the game. There was grip for the spinners. Rinku has been special every game. You can’t take him easy. But it’s a high-pressure situation when bowling those death overs. I went with my gut [feel] and gave Yash instead of Mohsin the last over. It just paid off.”
Nicholas Pooran is the Player of the Match: “I had to take it as deep as possible. I was looking to capitalise. This was a small pitch. I pride myself to play in these situations [after he came out at 73 for 5]. Ayush [Badoni] and I had had a partnership against Chennai as well. Our bowlers have done it in the last two games. We have a young bowling attack.”
Lucknow Super Giants vs Kolkata Knight Riders Highlights today, Saturday 20-5-2023. 68th Match (N), Indian Premier League 2023, Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
Nitish Rana: “We need to win by a big margin, so we are looking to play positive cricket. There are lot of positives but there are lot of things to learn as well. We have the same team.”
Krunal Pandya: “We know where we stand on the points table, and our destiny is in our hand. What matters is what total we put up on the board and how if defend it. Instead of Hooda, we have Karan. And K Gowtham comes in for Swapnil Singh.”
Toss: KKR chose to field.
Lucknow Super Giants team: 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Prerak Mankad, 3 Krunal Pandya (capt), 4 Marcus Stoinis, 5 Nicholas Pooran, 6 Ayush Badoni, 7 Karan Sharma, 8 K Gowtham, 9 Naveen-ul-Haq, 10 Ravi Bishnoi, 11 Mohsin Khan
Kolkata Knight Riders team: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 3 Venkatesh Iyer, 4 Nitish Rana (capt), 5 Andre Russell, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Shardul Thakur, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Harshit Rana, 10 Vaibhav Arora, 11 Varun Chakravarthy
Head to Head In T20’s: 2
Lucknow Super Giants Won: 2
Kolkata Knight Riders Won: 0
Form guide
(last five completed Matches, most recent first)
Lucknow Super Giants WWLLL
Kolkata Knight Riders WLWWL
Match Timings: 2:00 PM GMT | 7:30 PM Local
Umpires – Jayaraman Madanagopal, Ulhas Gandhe
TV Umpire – Yeshwant Barde
Match Referee – Manu Nayyar
Reserve Umpire – Mohamed Rafi
Match number – IPL 2023 – 68th Match
IPL Points Table
Pitch and weather: It rained in Kolkata in the build-up to the match, and intermittent showers are expected during the game too. Eden Gardens has proved to be a high-scoring venue, with 200 being breached four times in six games.
