Pune: A winless Mumbai Indians will face an uphill task against a buoyant Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL) match at the MCA Stadium here on Wednesday.
KKR are currently sitting in second place on the points table with two wins from three games. MI, on the other hand, are yet to open their account. Having lost both their matches to Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Capitals respectively, MI are at eighth position.
The onus will be on MI skipper Rohit Sharma to improve on multiple fronts to force a turnaround against the Shreyas Iyer-led KKR, who defeated Punjab Kings in their last outing.
Ishan Kishan at the top order and Tilak Verma's promising performance has given MI some hope but the finishing has been an issue for the side. Neither Kieron Pollard nor Tim David have fired so far. The duo have a perfect opportunity to get the campaign going against KKR.
Meanwhile, KKR too have some issues to resolve as coach Brendon McCullum wants his batters to "add a little bit of craft" to reap better rewards. Umesh Yadav has been prolific and now the addition of Pat Cummins could possibly solve KKR's death bowling issues.
Teams:
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Kieron Pollard, Suryakumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Tim David, Jaydev Unadkat, Tymal Mills, Jofra Archer (unavailable), Riley Meredith, Daniel Sams, Fabian Allen, Mayank Markande, Murugan Ashwin, Basil Thampi, Anmolpreet Singh, Dewald Brevis, Tilak Varma, Aryan Juyal (wk), Arjun Tendulkar, Ramandeep Singh, Rahul Buddhi, Hrithik Shokeen, Sanjay Yadav, Arshad Khan.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Ajinkya Rahane, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana, Shreyas Iyer (c), Sam Billings, Sheldon Jackson (wk), Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Tim Southee, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Shivam Mavi, Mohammad Nabi, Chamika Karunaratne, Baba Indrajith, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Pratham Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Rasikh Salam, Aman Hakim Khan, Ashok Sharma, Ramesh Kumar. (UNI)
