IPL 2022 highlights, KKR vs RR: Rinku Singh leads Kolkata Knight Riders to seven-wicket win

Jos Buttler and Devdutt Padikkal in the middle for Rajasthan Royals, Umesh Yadav has the ball in his hands for KKR. Here we go!

Rajasthan Royals are challenging the notion of “win the toss, win the match” this season with their captain Sanju Samson winning the toss just once throughout this season. And yet, they have won six of the matches in which they have lost the toss. 

Shimron Hetmyer has been talking to the host broadcasters: “For me, it is just about giving myself a chance. For the first two years of my career, I didn't give myself a chance to get set. But now I just wanted to give myself a couple of balls to see what the pitch is doing. My wife is my biggest coach and it was something we came up with. I tried to bring that into my game. I want to learn how to reverse sweep from Buttler. I tried it in practice by I keep getting out. Even the scoop. Batting looks much easier from the outside. I love playing here. Always a nice ground for the batters. Thank God I am not a bowler. It has been a great ground for us as well.”

Karun Nair is set to play his 150th T20 match today, as it turns out. Trent Boult had hyped him up recently, saying that he can hit anything that the New Zealand pace spearhead can throw at him. 

Nothing different today, looking forward to winning some tosses going forward. In this format the margin for error is very small. We have put in a great standard. Nothing much to improve on. We have Karun Nair coming in for Mitchell in this game. We are making a few changes looking at the conditions, and we feel Karun Nair will be a better option against tonight's opponents.

“Seems like a used wicket. Considering the dew factor it helps us in the second innings. We have lost many close games. The chat is always been positive cricket. We need to play fearless cricket. We have two changes. Roy comes in for Venky and Mavi comes in. It's important to have the right combination. We are trying to give as many matches as possible to the players, but it's also important to get the right combinations.”

Jos Buttler, Devdutt Padikkal, Sanju Samson(wicketkeeper/captain), Karun Nair, Shimron Hetmyer, Riyan Parag, Ravichandran Ashwin, Trent Boult, Prasidh Krishna, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Sen

Aaron Finch, Sunil Narine, Shreyas Iyer (captain), Baba Indrajith (wicketkeeper), Nitish Rana, Anukul Roy, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Shivam Mavi

Sunil Gavaskar points out on Star Sports that while Anukul Roy may not be a regular first team player in the IPL, “we all know that he is a brilliant fielder.” “We have seen him coming on as a substitute fielder whenever a bowler has bowled a few overs,” he says.   

Shreyas Iyer says that Anukul Roy has come in for the struggling Venkatesh Iyer. Shivam Mavi also comes in for KKR. 

Sanju Samson says that Karun Nair comes in for Daryl Mitchell for RR. 

Shreyas Iyer wins the toss, KKR to bowl first. 

KKR had used 19 players so far this season and it looks like they might just make it 20 this season. Anukul Roy, the Jharkhand all-rounder, has been given his maiden cap by KKR. 

Matthew Hayden says that the wicket is “very, very hard, extremely dry”. "Expect a big scoring game this evening. I think the sides in this venue are starting to get a bit tired (of bowling first), I think they should be batting first.  

The Wankhede Stadium is turning out to be a bit of a dilemma for captains. While usual convention is to bowl first if you win the toss in day-night T20 matches, the fact that two of the last three matches have been won by teams bowling first has put some questions on that formula. 

Jos Buttler is 99 runs away from reaching 8000 T20 runs. That means that there is a very good chance of him reaching that mark today, considering how he has played thus far this season. 

RR won the last match played between these two sides by 7 runs in what was a high scoring a thriller. RR scored 217/5 and KKR were all out for 210. The match had almost everything with Buttler scoring a century, Chahal getting a hat-trick and an incredible 107-run stand between Shreyas Iyer and Aaron Finch that came in less than 9 overs. 

Trent Boult's statistics in the first four games of the season and the four matches played since are like chalk and cheese. The New Zealand fast bowler took seven wickets for RR in the first four matches but has since taken just one. His average was 16.6 at the time and it has shot up to 141 in the last four matches. 

KKR have been on a bit of a winning run against RR in recent seasons of the IPL because of which the two teams are neck and neck in the head to head stats. Of the 25 matches between them, RR have won 13 and KKR have 12 victories, including two Super Over wins. 

Venkatesh Iyer's form will be the focus for KKR as they decide a playing XI for today. Read More

RR became the first team this season to lose to the Mumbai Indians, despite Buttler scoring a sublime 67 off 52 balls. This may lead to them putting in a few alterations to their playing XI todays game. Read More

KKR batters have a combined average of just over 19 this season, easily the worse among all teams. Their strike rate in the middle overs is the highest among all teams but the average in that area is also among the lowest, showing that they tend to lose wickets while trying to hit out bowlers even before the start of the death overs. 

Rajasthan Royals have played 14 times at the Wankhede Stadium and won just three matches. 

A run if five consecutive defeats means that there will be speculation about problems in the team environment. Kevin Pietersen, who knows a thing or two about fractured dressing rooms, said that KKR's dressing room is the opposite of that of Gujarat Titans, to whom they lost by eight wickets on Saturday. 

"That is a dressing room full of the opposite energy to Gujarat: negative, negative, negative. Last year, that run to the final was defined by out-of-the-box thinking. They had their analyst, Nathan Leamon, front and centre, sending signals out to the middle, and they seemed really innovative. Now it seems like the whole thing has run out of momentum. Along with Mumbai, they are my disappointments of the competition so far," Pietersen wrote on Betway. 

Andre Russell is 73 runs away from 2000 runs in IPL while Sunil Narine needs 19 more to complete 1000 runs in the league.

Comparisons have been rife between the kind of season Buttler is having this year to what Virat Kohli did in the 2016 IPL and whether the Englishman can surpass the former RCB and former India captain's numbers from that season. Kohli scored a total of 973 runs in 16 innings in 2016 with five centuries to his name. While Buttler remains a long way away from those giddy numbers, the fact remains that he has scored 566 runs in nine innings while Kohli had made 561 at the same point in 2016.