KKR bowl, Moeen and Gurbaz return

Toss: Kolkata Knight Riders opt to bowl vs Gujarat Titans

Ajinkya Rahane won the toss for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and elected to field on the chasing ground that Eden Gardens has been. Languishing at No. 7 on the table, in IPL 2025, KKR rung in the changes. The former South Africa wicketkeeper-batter, Quinton de Kock, was dropped for the youngster from Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz. They reinforced their batting further after the 95 all out as Moeen Ali came in for Anrich Nortje. Rahane said he saw some dryness in the pitch, which he expected to help his bowlers.

The table toppers Gujarat Titans now faced the challenge of setting a total. Like KKR, they trusted the pitch to help spin. Offspin-allrounder Washington Sundar replaced a fast bowler in their line-up. This change added some much-needed depth to their batting. Rashid Khan was their No. 7 last match, which by the way they won comfortably because their top three have been scoring heavily. Arshad Khan was expected to replace Sherfane Rutherford when defending the total.

GT's top-three batters average 49.72 this IPL, the highest for any team, which has let them get away with Rashid batting at No. 7. Lucknow Super Giants' (LSG) top three have aggregated more runs and have been scoring way quicker than GT: 172.4 compared to 155.92.

Gujarat Titans 1 Shubman Gill (capt.), 2 B Sai Sudharsan, 3 Jos Buttler (wk), 4 Sherfane Rutherford, 5 Shahrukh Khan, 6 Rahul Tewatia, 7 Rashid Khan, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Sai Kishore, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Prasidh Krishna

Impact subs: Ishant Sharma, Karim Janat, Mahipal Lomror, Anuj Rawat, Arshad Khan

Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Ajinkya Rahane (capt.), 4 Venkatesh Iyer, 5 Rinku Singh, 6 Andre Russell, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Moeen Ali, 9 Vaibhav Arora, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakravarthy

Impact subs: Manish Pandey, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Anukul Roy, Rovman Powell, Luvnith Sisodia