17 | Kolkata Knight Riders look to iron out kinks against fading Mumbai Indians

Kolkata Knight Riders will look to correct their faults and get the upper hand over misfiring Mumbai Indians when the two teams, placed at opposite ends of the IPL points table spectrum, clash here on Friday.

With six wins from nine matches giving them 12 points and the second position on the IPL points table, a playoff spot seems within reach of two-time winner KKR.

But the Shreyas Iyer-led team will need to show consistency across departments and avoid any mistakes in order to qualify for the final four.

Each of their three defeats came in the last six games for KKR, who were the target of a record chase by the Punjab Kings but did well to bounce back with a seven-wicket drubbing against the Delhi Capitals.

With the bat, KKR’s required firepower in the ranks, coupled with an ultra-aggressive approach, has delivered the goods more often than not, but it is their bowling that needs improvement.

Mitchell Starc gave away almost 12 runs while managing just seven wickets in eight outings. On flat, hitter-friendly pitches, the big Australian’s lack of control was also well exploited by overzealous hitters.

Harshit Rana is among those with the most wickets (11) for KKR this season, but the right-arm seamer will serve a one-match ban for his spirited celebrations after dismissing DC’s Abhishek Porel.

Vaibhav Arora’s nine scalps in five matches make him KKR’s best bet with the ball. A small Wankhede stadium with a batting-friendly wicket tends to encourage scores above 200 and the team would be aware of that.

The spotlight will also be on Rinku Singh, whose exclusion from India’s main squad for the T20 World Cup, triggered an outpouring of sympathy for the 26-year-old. The power hitter hasn’t gotten enough playing time this season, which likely tipped the scales against him.

For Mumbai Indians, the IPL playoff race seems lost even as the five-time winners still have five matches to play.

Even if Mumbai Indians win each of these matches, they can only get 16 points and somewhere in the middle of the points table – without necessarily challenging those who have been consistently good.

Jasprit Bumrah (14 wickets) and Gerald Coetzee (13) were MI’s best bets with the ball, but despite their impressive performances, the collective failure of the batting resulted in a disappointing season for the team.

Tilak Varma was MI’s top hitter with 343 runs, including three fifties in this IPL, but his performances were not enough to hide the failures of others.

Ishan Kishan has struck the ball well but has been seriously lacking in consistency at the top and losing wickets in droves in the powerplay has been one of MI’s biggest misfortunes this season.

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma’s (315 runs at a strike rate of 158.29) selfless approach with the bat has not given him big scores consistently, but his form will be the focus given the Cup of the world T20 is only a month away.

All eyes will also be on Suryakumar Yadav who has two fifties in seven IPL matches this season, but that is not the consistency one would expect from a hitter of his caliber.

Hardik Pandya, the under-fire skipper of Mumbai Indians, failed to dazzle with either the ball or the bat after a long injury lay-off. but the fact that he finds himself in the Indian side as vice-captain in the World Cup should motivate him to turn things around.

Teams (from)

Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (semaine), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi , Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Ensure, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (semaine), Nehal Wadhera, Luke Wood.

Knights of Calcutta: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (semaine), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (semaine), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine , Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar, Phil Salt.

The match begins at 7:30 p.m. IST.