Big match in prospects of the tournament and qualifying for playoffs, Gujarat Lions and Kolkata Knight Riders are set to meet on 19th May at Green Park stadium in Kanpur. Both teams are carrying same points in the IPL 2016 points table after playing same number of games. Winner of this match will almost be confirmed to be a part of top 4 teams after league matches.
Preview
Gujarat Lions will probably forget what happened to them in the last game as Royal Challengers Bangalore defeated them by 144 runs. Suresh Raina has come to the side after fulfilling parenting duties. Bowling and batting both were threatened by RCB in the last match. Eventually GL lost the match in first half when Bangalore’s Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers scored terrific hundreds to guide team’s total 248 in 20 overs.
But now it’s the right time for Gujarat to return in the form once again. When the last time both Gujarat and Kolkata met, Lions succeeds to win the match in final moments by 5 runs. Team Raina will definitely be looking to repeat the same against Kolkata Knight Riders who have got big loss in the last match as their prime all-rounder Andre Russell is out from this match.
Kolkata Knight Riders have got big blow as Russell will not be available for this match as he got leg injured during the last match. So there will be definitely a replacement and we can expect Colin Munro to play in a crunch game.
Playing XI (Probable)
Gujarat Lions
Suresh Raina (Captain), Dwayne Smith, Brendon McCullum, Aaron Finch, Dinesh Kathik, Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja, Praveen Kumar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Pravin Tambe, Shivil Kaushik.
Kolkata Knight Riders
Gautam Gambhir (Captain), Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Shakib Al Hasan, Yusuf Pathan, Suryakumar Yadav, Colin Munro, Piyush Chawla, Sunil Narine, Ankit Rajpoot, Morne Morkel.
Predictions
Score: The projected average score on Kanpur’s Green Park stadium is 160 runs. So we can expect a high scoring match on Thursday.
Win Chances: Kolkata Knight Riders looks pretty balanced side against Gujarat Lions but for this match, twenty20wiki.com’s predictions are with Gujarat Lions. GL have got 55 percent winning chances versus KKR in 51st game of Vivo IPL.
