In the on-going Indian Premier League (IPL), every team depends on their star batsmen. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) is one such team which depends heavily on Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers.

Karthik-led Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had a stunning start to their IPL 2019 campaign but recently, they have lost three games in a row and find themselves out of the top 4 in the points table. The last time KKR lost three games in a row was under skipper Gautam Gambhir in the 2014, a season which they went on to win the title.

As KKR take on struggling RCB at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, the KKR all-rounder Harry Gurney said: “In IPL whoever you play against, there are several world class players. RCB are no different. Kohli and de Villiers are obviously two of the best in the world. It’s important not to underestimate the rest of the batting lineup,” And further added that, “We will not rest on our laurels if we do get those two out early, because their lineup is full of very good players. So we won’t focus only on them (Kohli and de Villiers), we will focus on all the batsmen,”

Gurney said there is no question of KKR taking RCB lightly despite the latter's dismal record in the ongoing season, “We won’t be underestimating them. It’s a big game for us whether they can qualify or not qualify. I think we’re not overly interested in that. It’s more about KKR and what we need to do. We go into the second half still with our destiny in our own hands.”

KKR skipper Karthik is not among the runs and the left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav has not been able to perform as well as he is known to. When asked about this, the left-arm pacer from Nottingham said: “So far they both have been very focused on KKR. Now that they’ve been selected for the World Cup and that their weight is off their shoulders it will hopefully free them up and enable them to continue to perform well for KKR.”

(Inputs from PTI)