Kolkata Knight Riders won the toss and decided to field first against Royal Challengers Bangalore at the MA Chinnaswamy Stadium in the seventeenth match of this year’s Indian Premier League.

Pitch report:

“It looks a beautiful wicket to bat on. Nice even covering of grass. It is a six-hitting ground, ball flies here. The average score here is 175-180 but this might be a 200+ pitch,” Brendon McCullum.

Here is what the captains said:

Dinesh Karthik:

We had a five-day break after a tough gap against DC. We will bowl first.

Virat Kohli:

The key is not to be desperate about what we want to achieve. We want to play fearless cricket. I would back my skills and we want to execute our plans in this match. We have made a couple of changes. We want more balance in our bowling so Tim Southee replaces Hetmyer and Pawan Negi comes in place of Umesh Yadav.

Teams:

Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI):

Chris Lynn, Sunil Narine, Robin Uthappa, Nitish Rana, Dinesh Karthik(w/c), Shubman Gill, Andre Russell, Piyush Chawla, Kuldeep Yadav, Lockie Ferguson, Prasidh Krishna

Royal Challengers Bangalore (Playing XI):

Virat Kohli(c), Parthiv Patel, AB de Villiers, Marcus Stoinis, Moeen Ali, Akshdeep Nath(w), Pawan Negi, Tim Southee, Navdeep Saini, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Siraj