IPL 2017, Kolkata Knight Riders vs Delhi Daredevils: Face Off
A re-laid track at the Eden Gardens beckons the Delhi Daredevils as they face a tough afternoon game against the joint leaders at the top, Kolkata Knight Riders. The Kolkata outfit are flying high in the competition after bundling out Royal Challengers Bangalore for a paltry total of 49 in their last home game.
Delhi are second from bottom and must start picking up points to have any chance of qualifying for the playoffs.
With the pitch favouring seamers at Kolkata this season, Delhi will name their overseas combination of Anderson, Rabada, Cummins and Morris. Kolkata will probably name an unchanged side with Sunil Narine having a brilliant record with the ball against the Daredevils in the past.
In the last meeting between these two sides, Manish Pandey scripted a comeback as Kolkata resurrected their inning from 21 for 3 to chase down 169. The head to head record also favours the Knight Riders as in the 19 games played between these two teams, Kolkata have emerged on the winning side on 11 occasions.
We make a statistical comparison of the two expected lineups of both the teams and find a favourite for this fixture. The comparison made is only based on the IPL career stats with the internationals not being counted for this head to head tussle.
| Kolkata Knight Riders | Delhi Daredevils | Who’s better? |
| Gautam Gambhir | Sanju Samson | KKR |
| Runs- 3940, Avg- 31.52, SR- 125.08 | Runs- 1264, Avg- 26.33, SR- 122.72 | |
| Robin Uthappa | Aditya Tare | KKR |
| Runs- 3662, Avg- 30.02, SR- 130.83 | Runs- 339, Avg- 14.12, SR- 124.18 | |
| Manish Pandey | Karun Nair | KKR |
| Runs- 2079, Avg- 28.48, SR- 120.87 | Runs- 940, Avg- 24.74, SR- 124.17 | |
| Suryakumar Yadav | Rishabh Pant | DD |
| Runs- 547, Avg- 20.26, SR- 129.01 | Runs- 339, Avg- 24.21, SR- 141.84 | |
| Yusuf Pathan | Shreyas Iyer | KKR |
| Runs- 2866, Avg- 30.82, SR- 146.37 | Runs- 573, Avg- 26.05, SR- 125.38 | |
| Colin de Grandhomme | Corey Anderson | N/A |
Runs- 1, Avg- 0.33, SR- 16.67 Wkts- 4, Avg- 11.25, Eco- 6.75 | Runs- 420, Avg- 32.31, SR- 136.81 Wkts- 6, Avg- 41.67, Eco- 9.62 | |
| Chris Woakes | Chris Morris | N/A |
| Wkts- 10, Avg- 24.3, Eco- 9.72 | Wkts- 53, Avg- 22.11, Eco- 7.42 | |
| Nathan Coulter-Nile | Kagiso Rabada | N/A |
| Wkts- 29, Avg- 19.83, Eco- 7.58 | Wkts- 1, Avg- 30, Eco- 7.5 | |
| Kuldeep Yadav | Pat Cummins | N/A |
| Wkts- 14, Avg- 19.71, Eco- 7.89 | Wkts- 11, Avg- 27.09, Eco- 8.02 | |
| Sunil Narine | Amit Mishra | Even-Stevens |
| Wkts- 90, Avg- 20.08, Eco- 6.23 | Wkts- 131, Avg- 23.31, Eco- 7.29 | |
| Umesh Yadav | Zaheer Khan | DD |
| Wkts- 82, Avg- 30.12, Eco- 8.43 | Wkts- 99, Avg- 26.86, Eco- 7.61 |
Kolkata Knight Riders 4-2 Delhi Daredevils
Understandably, Kolkata have a more solid and experienced batting lineup than the Daredevils with the bowling units of both the sides cancelling each other out. A lot will depend on Delhi’s young Indian stars to rise up to the occasion against the likes of Narine and co.