NEW DELHI: Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain KL Rahul won the toss and chose to bowl first against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their IPL 2024 match at the Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow on Sunday.
LSG brought in Yash Thakur to replace the injured Mayank Yadav, while KKR substituted Vaibhav Arora with Harshit Rana.
After opting to field, captain KL Rahul, who has not been included in India's squad for the T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the USA, said: "I'm not a best reader of a wicket, we just like chasing."
"The good thing is we have been able to adapt really well and quickly to the conditions, there have been quite a few brilliant individual performances as well. There's been a lot of talk about strike-rate, and T20 cricket has changed a lot in the last couple of years. He was injured in the last game, Yash Thakur comes in for Mayank Yadav," he said.
A day before the match, Rahul was spotted practicing speaking in the local Lucknow dialect.
From using the famous Lucknowi 'Bhak' to the phrase 'badtameezi mat kariye aaap humse,' KL Rahul was proficient in saying these well-known Lucknow expressions.
The Teams:
Lucknow Super Giants: KL Rahul (c/wk), Marcus Stoinis, Deepak Hooda, Nicholas Pooran, Ashton Turner, Ayush Badoni, Krunal Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi, Naveen-ul-Haq, Mohsin Khan, Yash Thakur.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), Philip Salt (wk), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana.
