KKR Playing 11 vs SRH- IPL 2024, Match 3

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in their opening game of IPL 2024 on March 23, Saturday. Knight Riders finished seventh last season and will look to have a better campaign. Gautam Gambhir returned as the mentor of KKR and immediately made an impact by buying Mitchell Starc for a mammoth 24.75 crores. Alongside him, KKR bought nine other players in the auction.

KS Bharat (Rs. 50 lakhs), Chetan Sakariya (Rs. 50 lakhs), Mitchell Starc (Rs. 24.75 crores), Angkrish Raghuvanshi (Rs. 20 lakhs), Ramandeep Singh (Rs. 20 lakhs), Sherfane Rutherford (Rs. 1.5 crores), Manish Pandey (Rs. 50 lakhs), Mujeeb Ur Rahman (Rs. 2 crores), Gus Atkinson (Rs. 1 crore), Sakib Hussain (Rs. 20 lakhs).

From the players that they bought, Starc and Sakariya look to be the two players who can break into the XI. They had Jason Roy and Gus Atkinson pulling out ahead of the season and hence KKR have roped in Phil Salt and Dusmantha Chameera as replacements. Starc and Chameera are the only two overseas pacers in the KKR squad.

They seemingly have a very good first XI and if the Indian trio of Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, and Rinku Sigh can fire, KKR can go a long way. Shreyas Iyer returned as captain. He was recently snubbed from the central contract list and would like to make use of this IPL season to return to the Indian side.

KKR will play at home in their first game and thus it will be interesting to see if they play their spin trio together or whether they will use Suyash Sharma as the impact player like they used him last season. They used 12 opening pairs in the last two seasons and the Knight Riders and Gambhir will look to address that problem as well. In this article. we predict the likely playing XI of Kolkata Knight Riders for their match against SRH.

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KKR Playing 11 vs SRH- IPL 2024, Match 3

Phil Salt (WK)

Phil Salt will open the batting for KKR. He joined the franchise as Jason Roy’s replacement. He went unsold in the IPL 2024 auction. He is the number two ranked T20I batter with two back-to-back hundreds against West Indies recently. He scored 74 off 41 bbls in the practice match hitting three fours and six sixes.

Venkatesh Iyer

Iyer will open the batting along with Salt. He scored over 400 runs for KKR last year including a century against Mumbai Indians. He is out of the Indian team at the moment.

Shreyas Iyer (C)

Iyer will slot in at three. He scored 401 runs for KKR in IPL 2022. He missed IPL 2023 with a shoulder injury and has just been deemed fit to play IPL 2024. However, he has been advised not to stretch his leg too forward while defending the ball.

Nitish Rana

Rana led KKR last season in the absence of Shreyas Iyer. This year he will be his deputy. The southpaw scored 413 runs last year at a strike rate of 140.96. He will need to replicate his form this season.

Rinku Singh

The rink will bat at five. His IPL 2023 exploits helped him make his white-ball debut for India. He achieved the incredible heist of hitting five back-to-back sixes last season. It will be interesting to see whether he too can replicate his form this year.

Andre Russell

Andre Russell makes up the top six for KKR. He scored just over 200 runs in the IPL last year and picked up seven wickets. Overall, he is four short of 100 IPL wickets and inching closer to 2500 IPL runs.

Sunil Narine

Narine will slot in at seven. He still plays the role of an all-rounder for KKR but his best days with the bat are over. He has taken 170 IPL wickets for the Knight Riders.

Mitchell Starc

Starc will slot in at eight. KKR splurged 24.75 crores for the Australian pacer, It will be interesting to see if he plays all the games. He has joined the side ahead of the first game. This is his first IPL season since 2015.

Harshit Rana

Harshit impressed one and all with his pace last year and might be selected over Sakariya and Vaibhav Arora as the Indian pacer. He picked five wickets last season.

Varun Chakravarthy

Charkavarthy was the most successful KKR bowler last season picking up 20 wickets. Overall, he has picked 61 wickets for the Kolkata Knight Riders since IPL 2020. Fitness is his weakest link.

Suyash Sharma

Suyash might be included in the playing XI and not as an Impact sub given that KKR will be playing their first game at home and on a spinning track. He picked up 10 wickets last season.

Impact Sub- Manish Pandey

Manish Pandey can be used as the impact sub by KKR in the first game against SRH lengthening their batting lineup. Where he bats as an impact sub will be an interesting observation.

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