Kolkata Knight Riders will begin their campaign on IPL 13 against Mumbai Indians at Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi tonight.
Kolkata Knight Riders are set to play their third consecutive season in the captaincy of Dinesh Karthik. Last year they failed to reach to play-offs but this year they have added Eoin Morgan, Tom Banton, and Pat Cummins to their squad and will be hoping for better results.
For them in batting Andre Russell will be the trump card and the likes of Shubman Gill, Eoin Morgan, and Dinesh Karthik too have to play big knocks in the top order and useful knocks from Sunil Narine, Nitish Rana, etc will help further. In the bowling, Pat Cummins, Sunil Narine, and Kuldeep Yadav will be the leaders, and Indian youngster Kamlesh Nagarkoti who will play his first IPL season, Shivam Mavi and Prasidh Krishna too have a good pace to trouble the batsmen.
On the other hand, defending champions Mumbai Indians who lost their opening match to Chennai Super Kings will look to open their win account. Captain Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock need to convert their starts and middle-order batsmen too have to be more responsible.
In bowling Bumrah and Chahar didn't look at their best and they will look to bounce back and along with Trent Boult and James Pattinson they can be very dangerous and the whole team also need to work on their fielding.
All the major stats and facts ahead of the fifth match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians in Abu Dhabi :
Head to Head in IPL -
Matches - 25
Mumbai Indians won - 19
Kolkata Knight Riders won - 6
6 - Mumbai Indians have lost each of the six matches they have played in UAE in IPL. Five of the losses came in 2014.
11 - Hardik Pandya has taken 11 wickets at 14.45 in 10 matches against Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL.
824 - Rohit Sharma has scored 824 runs against Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL and needs 6 more runs to go past David Warner's tally of 829 runs and become the leading run-scorer against them in IPL.
1000 - Suryakumar Yadav needs 47 more runs to become the seventh player to score 1000 or more runs for Mumbai Indians in the IPL.
5000 - Rohit Sharma needs 90 more runs to become the third batsman to score 5000 runs in IPL after Virat Kohli (5426) and Suresh Raina (5368).
