Saturday afternoon will not be less than a full housefull movie show as the two greatest Bollywood superstar`s team will meet each other.
These two will start with their new captains. In last year IPL Punjab finished 6th while KKR finished 7th and this year they will definitely try to turn the position upwards. It will be great to see the dynamic VEER & ZARA duo with their respective teams.
KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (KKR):
A forced change in captaincy due to the injury of Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana will have a lot of pressure and responsibility of a great fan-base of KKR. It will be his debut captaincy in IPL.
Two backbone of KKR Andre Russell and Sunil Narine, the most impactful players in the list of all rounders and match winners will again showclass their destruction by batting and bowling. Shakib Al Hasan will again join his old franchise and this will give boost to the team a strong all rounder combo pack but he will join a little late due to his national duty.
Trade of Shardul Thakur and Lockie Ferguson boosted their fast bowling lineup along with Tim Southee and Umesh Yadav.
PUNJAB KINGS (PBKS):
Last year Punjab`s highest scorer and this year captain of PBKS, Shikhar Dhawan not a new role for him in IPL but will definitely change one thing that is not able to score half century in 11 matches which he was captaining. Besides this his runs in IPL can easily tell how much his contribution to the team always matters.
Sam Curran, the eye holder in IPL auction with record breaking bid is again back to his old team. Liam Livingston, a key player to the Punjab squad with his all round performance will not be able to join the team in the opening match of PBKS due to injury but later on he will join the team. Jonny Bairstow will not be available in the entire season due to his injury already declared by him.
Kagiso Rabada will be absent against KKR due to national duty and will join later on. Nathan Ellis, a good Australian fast bowler can make a triplet alongwith Curran and Arshdeep.
HEAD TO HEAD:
They both play 30 matches with each other.
| KKR | PBKS | |
| WON | 20 | 10 |
| HIGHEST SCORE | 245 | 214 |
| LOWEST SCORE | 109 | 119 |
Probable 11 for KKR:
Rahmanullah Gurbaz(wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Rinku Singh, Mandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Shardul Thakur, Sunil Narine, Lockie Ferguson, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy
Probable 11 for PBKS:
Shikhar Dhawan(c), Prabhsimran Singh, Bhanuka Rajpaksa, Jitesh Sharma(wk), Sikander Raza, Shahrukh Khan, Sam Curran, Harpreet Brar, Rahul Chahar, Nathan Ellis, Arshdeep Singh.