Mumbai Indians who lost their last four league matches in the twenty20 IPL tournament so far will be looking to register their first win against the Kolkata Knight Riders. However the task of doing that seems to be very daunting for them since they have already lost their quality off spinner Harbhajan Singh due to eleven match ban impose by Match referee Farookh Engineer after the slapping incidence. Sachin Tendulkar is yet to recover and they are really struggling without him in the tournament so far. Sachin who is one of the finest batsman India have ever produced is also hoping that his teams finally able to register their first win in his absence against the Kolkata Knight Riders. Ricky Ponting who is playing his last IPL twenty20 match this year for KKR is hoping to score some runs to get his team a victory. Brandom McCullum who started the opening game of the tournament with blistering 158* runs of 73 balls with 13 sixes and 10 fours has not scored much in the last two matches. So he will be also looking to give a quick start to his team. There has been only one match played at Eden garden so far and that too ended up with lots of controversy about the pitch and power cut of during matches. However this time curator of Eden Garden insured that the pitch this time will be full of runs with some helps for the bowlers. From the Mumbai point of view they will be praying for Jayasurya to fire who has struggle to score the runs in the tournament. Mumbai Indians bowlers are really down after the hammering they have receives in the last game from A.Gilchrist. Mumbai Indians are also worried about their bowlers especially Ashish Nehra who looks wayward with the ball in all four matches he played so far. Kolkata Knight Riders looks strong on paper in both department of the game and are favorite to beat Mumbai Indians. Likely Playing XI for both the teams (Match will start from 20:00 PM India time) Mumbai Indians: Sanath Jayasuriya, Robin Uthappa, Ajinkya Rahane, Abhishek Nayar, Domnic Thormley, Dwayne Bravo, Shaun Pollock (Captain), Pinal Shah (wk), Musavir Khote, Ashish Nehra, Dhaval Kulkarni, Lalchand Rajput (Coach). Kolkata Knight Riders: Sourav Ganguly (Captain), Brendon McCullum, Ricky Ponting, David Hussey, Mohammad Hafeez, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ajit Agarkar, Ashok Dinda, Murali Kartik, Ishant Sharma, John Buchanan (Coach). |
