After a loss against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in their opening encounter, Delhi Daredevils (DD) have a tough task of opening their account against a formidable Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Indian Premier League 2014 match at Dubai Sports Club. All eyes will be on Kevin Pietersen‘s availability and his presence in the playing XI will be a big boost for Delhi.
Kolkata put forth a clinical performance against Mumbai Indians and look set to carry their momentum ahead. Against Mumbai Indians (MI) their batting was on the mark and veteran Jacques Kallis looks in good nick giving them solid starts as he used to do in the previous season as well. However, what makes a major difference between teams is the quality of bowling attack. Against a strong Mumbai batting, KKR annihilated the opposition. Morne Morkel has been in great form and Piyush Chawla too looked good on the wicket which was tough to score. The KKR team management would be delighted to have hit the right note with Manish Pandey top of the order. The talented right-hander had a great season for Karnataka and he continued his form.
There are not much worries for Kolkata except the form of their skipper Gautam Gambhir. Robin Uthappa, who isn’t a regular wicketkeeper will have to much more tight against bowlers like Narine. He missed a few crucial opportunities in the previous match.
Whereas for Delhi there are a lot more issues to deal with. What looked like an excellent top order in Murali Vijay, Dinesh Karthik and Manoj Tiwary, the batting fell apart to poor shots. If Pietersen remains unavailable it is likely that JP Duminy could bat up the order with the solidity that he brings to the batting. Ross Taylor and Duminy were the positives from the game but the bowling was below par as well. Except for Mohammed Shami none of the other bowlers looked effective enough to make a difference. It will be a huge challenger for Delhi to overcome all the chinks in the armour and deal against Narine and co.
This is the third venue for the IPL in UAE and both teams might not have a clear idea of the conditions. Though they will get to see MI and RCB play before them. Kolkata are unlikely to fiddle with their playing XI while Delhi may look to shuffle their batting order.
Squads:
Delhi Daredevils: Kevin Pietersen (c), Dinesh Karthik (wk), JP Duminy, Ross Taylor, Mayank Agarwal, Murali Vijay, Manoj Tiwary, Saurabh Tiwary, Milind Kumar, Jimmy Neesham, Mohammed Shami, Jaydev Unadkat, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jayant Yadav, Rahul Shukla, Wayne Parnell, HS Sharath, Laxi Ratan Shukla, Kedar Jadhav, Siddharth Kaul, Rahul Sharma, Quinton de Kock, Nathan Coulter-Nile.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (c), Jacques Kallis, Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Shakib Al Hasan, Manvinder Bisla (wk), Ryan ten Doeschate, Yusuf Pathan, Suryakumar Yadav, Sunil Narine, Chris Lynn, Kuldeep Yadav, Pat Cummins, Debabrata Das, Piyush Chawla, Morne Morkel, Umesh Yadav, Sayan Mondal, R Vinay Kumar, Andre Russell, Veer Pratap Singh.
(Abhijit Banareis a reporter at CricketCountry. He is an avid quizzer and loves to analyse and dig out interesting facts which allows him to learn something new every day. Apart from cricket he also likes to keep a sharp eye on Indian politics, and can be followed on Twitter and blog))
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