🏏IPL 2022 Match 19: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Delhi Capitals🏏

Kolkata Knight Riders are all set to take on the Delhi Capitals in Match 19 today.

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Kolkata is coming off a thumping win against the Mumbai Indians in their previous game, on the back of Pat Cummins's brilliant show with the bat.

The Shreyas Iyer-led side is currently at the top of the points' table with three wins in four games, and the only area of concern for them will be the top order that has been struggling.

On the other hand, Delhi Capitals are coming off two consecutive losses in their last two games after a winning start to their campaign this year and are currently at the seventh position in the points' table with just two points on board.

David Warner and Anrich Nortje returned to the playing line-up in the last game, but it did not make much of a difference, as they looked completely out of sorts.

However, the addition of Mitchell Marsh will add a lot more depth to their batting and bowling departments.

Anrich Nortje’s comeback game didn’t get off to a great start as Lucknow Super Giants Quinton de Kock crashed him for a hat-trick of fours and a six off the fifth ball.

Rusty perhaps, nerves may be, but it was all quite gentle.

Three full balls on the off stump line were driven away without much fuss. And the unsurprising short ball was disposed over leg-side boundary!!

Both teams are hoping for a win to assert their supremacy over the other!

Probable Playing XIs---

Kolkata Knight Riders XI: Ajinkya Rahane, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (C), Sam Billings (WK), Nitish Rana, andre Russell, Pat Cummins, Sunil Narine, Umesh Yadav, Rasikh Salam, Varun Chakravarthy.

Delhi Capitals XI: David Warner, Prithvi Shaw, Yash Dhull, Rishabh Pant, Lalit Yadav, Sarfaraz Khan, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Mustafizur Rahman, Anrich Nortje

Pitch Report

The pitch at the Brabourne Stadium generally assists both bowlers and batsmen. The short boundaries and a quick outfield will certainly help the batters. Teams will be looking to chase with dew factor coming to play in the match.

The previous game at the Brabourne Stadium saw a big run chase by Gujarat Titans, and so far, it has been an excellent pitch for batting. With the dew factor not expected to affect the day game, the captains might be tempted to bat first. However, they are likely to stick to bowling first as it has been the trend so far in the tournament and many big scores have been chased down.

Probable best batter of the Match: Venkatesh Iyer

Venkatesh Iyer did not have the best of starts to IPL 2022 in the first three games, but he managed to get to a useful fifty in the previous game which would have done a world of good to his confidence level. On a tricky pitch, where the other batters were struggling to time the ball, Iyer constructed his innings well taking the odd risk at times and remained unbeaten on 50 off 41 balls with six fours and a six.

Probable best bowler of the Match: Umesh Yadav

Umesh Yadav is still at the top of the Purple Cap race with nine wickets in the tournament already in four games, and he bowled a splendid opening spell to Rohit Sharma in the previous game to remove the opener for just three. He has continued to impress and should have had one more wicket when a relatively easy catch had gone down with a mix-up between Rahane and Billings. The 34-year-old is making a strong case to get back in the limited-overs setup for India again.

Today's Match Prediction: KKR to win the match. (From net source)

Kolkata Knight Riders will square off with Delhi Capitals in the 19th match of IPL 2022 today.

In the previous match against Mumbai Indians, at one time, Knight Riders would have given up the match after the dismissal of Andre Russell.

However, Australian Test skipper Pat Cummins had different plans and played an improbable innings of 56* runs from just 15 balls to help his side conquer the Mumbai Indians by 5 wickets with 24 balls still left. Rahane’s form is a bit of a worrying thing for the management. Will they take a harsh decision on him? We need to wait and watch.

Delhi Capitals, on the other hand, weren’t able to time the ball properly and failed to hit big sixes in the last match against Super Giants and lost the match by 6 wickets. This was their 2nd consecutive loss in this tournament & are currently at the seventh position in the points table with just two points on board. Anrich Nortje who played his first match of the season didn’t look effective with the ball which was one of the main reasons behind their loss. Prithvi Shaw looking as usual in sublime form and he will be the key man for them.

Top Picks

Shreyas Iyer is finding it difficult to score big runs in this year’s IPL. Knight Riders, skipper has managed to score 69 runs in 4 matches with the highest score of 26. He is expected to deliver big in this match.

Prithvi Shaw is timing the ball extremely well and scoring runs easily in the Powerplay. In 3 matches in this tournament, he has scored 109 runs at an average of 36.33 with the highest score of 61.

Andre Russell will give more solidarity to Knight Riders in the middle, he has got immense power to hit big sixes. So far in this tournament, he has scored 106 runs at an average of 53 and managed to pick up 2 wickets as well.

Uncapped player, Lalit Yadav playing his role quite well for Delhi Capitals in this year’s IPL. Delhi-born 25-year-old all-rounder has scored 73 runs in this tournament at an average of 73 and picked up a wicket as well.

Umesh Yadav has completely transformed his bowling in this tournament and already picked up 9 wickets in 4 matches at an impressive economy of 5.25.

Chinaman Kuldeep Yadav has kept the faith of the management and delivered well every time he got the ball. In 3 matches, he has scalped 6 wickets with the best figures of 3 for 18.

Kuldeep Yadav is another player who's up against his former team today, going from warming the benches at KKR to doing a pretty good job so far at DC. KKR are perched at the top of the table currently, winning all the matches where they've batted second. It's an afternoon game, so you'd expect the toss won't matter so much. Should be a good game on our hands.

Kolkata v Delhi, Match 19:

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