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Knight Riders to play for pride

S. Sabanayakan

— PHOTO: Sushanta Patronobish

SPEED MERCHANTS: Ishant Sharma, Shoaib Akhtar and Ashok Dinda will look to give Knight Riders a win in its last assignment of the season.

KOLKATA: Having sewn up its place in the semifinals of the DLF Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament, Kings XI Punjab will take on Kolkata Knight Riders with great amount of confidence on Sunday at the Eden Gardens here.

Two back-to-back tight matches lifted the team’s ability to find its bearings and there is no way the team can be brought down at the hallowed precinct by the host.

Pride is the watchword now for the Knight Riders. Led by the redoubtable Sourav Ganguly and coached by famous Aussie John Buchanan, Knight Riders’ progress was cut short by various reasons, the least being the difference of opinion between the two central figures.

No rift

Buchanan has scotched rumours of any rift between the captain and him. More than anything, the blame should be placed on the team’s balance or lack of it. Loaded with pace bowlers, the side’s failure to pep up its batting can easily is the main reason for its failure.

With the curtains coming down on the current season for the Kolkata outfit with this game, whether it will be able to salvage some pride in the last encounter is anybody’s guess.

For Kings XI Punjab, the learning process began very early with two losses. It bounced back and put up a series of wins. The team again came a cropper against — for the second time — Chennai Super Kings but recovered to win all the matches thereafter, some very close.

Well served by five overseas recruits the team’s bowling combination is all Indians. The successful return of Kumar Sangakkara to form in the last match certainly augurs well for the side.

The teams (from):

Kings XI Punjab: Yuvraj Singh (capt.), Shaun Marsh, James Hopes, Luke Pomersbach, Karan Goel, Mahela Jayawardene, Irfan Pathan, Piyush Chawla, S. Sreesanth, V.R.V. Singh, Uday Kaul, Ramesh Powar, Gagandeep Singh, Tanmay Srivastava, Pankaj Dharmani, Kumar Sangakkara.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Sourav Ganguly (capt.), Aakash Chopra, Salman Butt, David Hussey, Wriddhiman Saha, Ajit Agarkar, Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, Iqbal Abdullah, Murali Kartik, Ishant Sharma, Ashok Dinda, L.R. Shukla, Md. Hafeez, Tatenda Taibu, Debabrata Das, Ajantha Mendis, Siddharth Kaul.

Match starts at 8 p.m.

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