Kolkata Knight Riders have announced an unchanged playing XI for the marquee clash against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in IPL 2026. It means Finn Allen, Cameron Green, Rovman Powell and Sunil Narine are the four overseas players that will represent KKR tonight. It resulted in Matheesha Pathirana once again warming the bench and waiting for his opportunity.
The Sri Lanka international joined the squad around two weeks back and since then, he has trained with the squad, but failed to break into the playing XI. Notably, he suffered a hamstring injury during the T20 World Cup and even though SLC has given Pathirana the green light, KKR are not ready to risk him at the moment. Ahead of the clash against Delhi, mentor Dwayne Bravo stated that the cricketer is close to action, but the time isnโt quite right.
โHe is very close to playing, but we do not want to rush him because of the nature of his injury. We all want to see him back, but timing is important. It is great to have someone of his quality around the group again,” Bravo said in the pre-match press conference.
In the meantime, KKR havenโt released any statement highlighting the nature of the injury or when he can possibly return to action. Now that the three-time champions have registered three consecutive wins, they are also hesitant to change the winning combination. Thus, Pathirana may continue to wait for his chance.
KKR opt to bowl first vs Delhi
KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane won the toss and elected to bowl first against Delhi. Explaining the reason behind the move, the veteran stated that the wicket looked varied a lot in recent times and hence, they want to analyse first and then try to chase it down.
โWe’re going to bowl first. The last 3-4 games whatever we saw, it’s been kind of very different games, 264, 160, the low scoring game against RCB as well, so I thought it’s important to see the wicket, see how it’s playing and then it becomes easier to bat on. But having said that, no winning the toss, losing the toss, it’s all about playing good cricket of 40 overs,โ Rahane said.ย
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Ajinkya Rahane (c), Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Kartik Tyagi, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy
Delhi Capitals (Playing XI): Pathum Nissanka, KL Rahul (wk), Nitish Rana, Sameer Rizvi, Tristan Stubbs, Axar Patel (c), Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar
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