Gujarat Titans skipper Hardik Pandya won the toss against Kolkata Knight Riders’ Nitish Rana on Saturday in IPL 2023 match 39. While Hardik revealed that he opted to bowl given there were a few clouds rumbling over the Eden Gardens, Rana said that he wanted to first either way.
The defending champions, GT went with the same playing XI from their last match however, Rana revealed that there were two changes to his side, Umesh Yadav had a slight hamstring issue and has been rested, whereas Jason Roy suffered from a back spasm and was also rested, with Harshit Rana and Rahmanullah Gurbaz coming into the playing XI.
Pandya insisted that his side would want to keep their winning momentum going and stay within the top four.
“We will bowl first. Just because of the weather, it was bright when we came and we thought we should bat, but it has changed now. I’m pretty happy with where we are, 7 games gone, 7 more to come, we need to play good cricket and qualify for the playoffs. We will learn from the losses as well, but we just need to play some consistent cricket. We are playing the same team,” said Pandya during toss.
Interestingly, Shubman Gill was among the impact subs for Gujarat Titans alongside, Srikar Bharat, Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore, Shivam Mavi and Jayant Yadav.
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Nitish Rana on the other hand said that his side could improve a lot of things and would like to pick up some momentum. Two forced changes for Rana’s side.
“We would have batted first, DLS could come into the equation, but we would still have batted first. There are always areas where we can improve, we have had some forced changes – Jason Roy has a back issue, he’s replaced by Gurbaz. Harshit Rana replaces Umesh Yadav,” said Rana.
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Suyash Sharma was named among the impact subs and is likely to come on when KKR will bowl.
KKR’s Impact Subs – Suyash Sharma, Mandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Tim Southee, Kulwant Khejroliya.
Teams:
Gujarat Titans: Wriddhiman Saha(w), Abhinav Manohar, Hardik Pandya(c), Vijay Shankar, David Miller, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad, Mohammed Shami, Mohit Sharma, Joshua Little
Kolkata Knight Riders: N Jagadeesan, Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, David Wiese, Shardul Thakur, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
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