Kolkata Knight Riders, after the loss against Royal Challengers Bangalore, are on the fifth rung of the IPL 2022 points table after two games. The two-time champions will look to improve their standing when they face the Punjab Kings at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday. 

The Punjab Kings defeated RCB in their season opener and are placed third on the table with a healthy net run rate. The winner of their match against KKR will become the first side to register two wins this year. 

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Shreyas Iyer’s Kolkata opened their season with a win versus the Chennai Super Kings. However, against RCB, they set an under-par total to see Faf du Plessis’ men take the game by three wickets. 

None of Kolkata’s top-order batsmen could make any significant contributions agains RCB. Openers Ajinkya Rahane and the attacking Venkatesh Iyer perished cheaply. Skipper Shreyas Iyer and left-handed Nitish Rana failed too. The only silver lining in the loss was the openeing spells by pacer Umesh Yadav and Tim Southee. The duo managed to ground Bangalore to 17/3 at one stage. 

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Punjab Kings, on the other hand, managed to pip RCB’s 2015-run total in the first game. For the 2014 finalists, contributions came from all batsmen. South Africa speedster Kagiso Rabada is expected to play after completing his three-day quarantine and that will give a big boost to the Punjab attack.

Teams (From): Kolkata Knight Riders: Aaron Finch, Abhijeet Tomar, Ajinkya Rahane, Baba Indrajith, Nitish Rana, Pratham Singh, Rinku Singh, Shreyas Iyer, Ashok Sharma, Pat Cummins, Rasikh Dar, Shivam Mavi, Tim Southee, Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy, Aman Khan, Andre Russell, Anukul Roy, Chamika Karunaratne, Mohammed Nabi, Ramesh Kumar, Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Sam Billings, Sheldon Jackson.

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Punjab Kings: Shikhar Dhawan, Mayank Agarwal, Arshdeep Singh, Kagiso Rabada, Jonny Bairstow, Rahul Chahar, Harpreet Brar, Shahrukh Khan, Prabhsimran Singh, Jitesh Sharma, Ishan Porel, Liam Livingstone, Odean Smith, Sandeep Sharma, Raj Angad Bawa, Rishi Dhawan, Prerak Mankad, Vaibhav Arora, Writtick Chatterjee, Baltej Dhanda, Ansh Patel, Nathan Ellis, Atharva Taide, Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Benny Howell.

Match starts at 7.30 PM.