Varun returns as KKR choose to bowl against CSK
The struggling Kolkata Knight Riders received a shot in the arm with the return of Varun Chakravarthy, who missed their previous two games due to a finger injury. They also won the toss and elected to chase, something teams tend to do for the fear of dew in night games. Varun replaced Navdeep Saini in KKR's bowling-first XI, which meant the left-arm spinner Anukul Roy retained his spot. KKR were still looking for their first win of IPL 2026.
KKR's opponents, the hosts Chennai Super Kings, were not much better on the points table, having won just one of their four matches. However, they were buoyed by Sanju Samson's century in the previous match, which set up a win against Delhi Capitals. While CSK would have liked to have fielded first themselves, this particular surface at Chepauk has featured successful defences of late. During the World Cup earlier this year, this relaid pitch offered some variable bounce as the match progressed.
CSK made no changes to their winning combination. They are likely to substitute Akeal Hosein into the game as the Impact Player, though Matt Henry is also an option. KKR's Impact Player is likely to be Finn Allen.
Chennai Super Kings 1 Sanju Samson (wk), 2 Ruturaj Gaikwad (capt.), 3 Ayush Mhatre, 4 Dewald Brevis, 5 Shivam Dube, 6 Sarfaraz Khan, 7 Jamie Overton, 8 Anshul Kamboj, 9 Noor Ahmad, 10 Khaleel Ahmed, 11 Gurjapneet Singh
CSK bench: Matthew Short, Akeal Hosein, Kartik Sharma, Prashant Veer, Matt Henry
Kolkata Knight Riders 1 Ajinkya Rahane (capt.), 2 Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Rinku Singh, 5 Rovman Powell, 6 Ramandeep Singh, 7 Sunil Narine, 8 Anukul Roy, 9 Varun Chakravarthy, 10 Kartik Tyagi, 11 Vaibhav Arora
KKR bench: Manish Pandey, Finn Allen, Tejasvi Singh, Navdeep Saini, Tim Seifert
It's not easy being Cameron Green. Australia want him to be their golden boy with both bat and ball across formats. His IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), now want him to be their golden boy with both bat and ball and drag them up from the bottom of the IPL 2026 points table.
IPL pressure is often greater than the pressure in international cricket. Especially if your price tag is INR 25.20 crore (US$2.8 million/AU$4 million approx.) and you're out of form. The pressure has mounted on Green after he managed only 56 runs in four innings at a strike rate of 147.36.
In his most recent innings, against Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens, Green struggled to get the ball away. He batted as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He needed 15 balls to find the boundary and 20 to clear it on a fairly flat surface. When he finally pumped a six, off Mohammed Shami, relief was writ large on his face. He finished with an unbeaten 32 off 24 balls.
Relief turned into joy when Green struck in his first over of the season - he was unable to bowl in KKR's first three matches because of a Cricket Australia diktat relating to workload management - to bounce Rishabh Pant out. But Green felt the weight of the world on his shoulders once again when rookie Mukul Choudhary whacked him for two sixes and a four in the penultimate over of the chase, and sent KKR tumbling to defeat from a position of strength.
Even before that game, Aaron Finch had sensed that something was wrong with Green. It's worth reproducing Finch's comments from ESPNcricinfo's TimeOut show following KKR's washed-out game against Punjab Kings in which Green nicked off for 4 off 2 balls.
"There's a bit of panic, he's not looking the same as the past. Remember when he was at the top of the order for MI - how he had totally different intent," Finch said. "He was imposing at the crease. Now he looks tentative. Don't push him down. Push him either up the order, or give him a rest."
KKR ended up demoting Green to No. 4 against LSG and made life harder for him and themselves. Green is no middle-order powerhouse like Andre Russell. He is best suited to batting at No. 3 as his IPL numbers there suggest: 504 runs in 15 innings at a strike rate close to 160.
When Green was with MI, he had Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma batting above him. He had Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma and Tim David batting below him. Similarly at Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), he had Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli at the top and dynamic batters such as Rajat Patidar and Dinesh Karthik to follow.
In this KKR team, he doesn't have as many versatile batters around him and the management has now asked him to bounce around the line-up and do the heavy lifting in the middle order. It didn't work against LSG.
Finding the best position for Green might result in other players having to give up their best spots. Their captain, Ajinkya Rahane, will have to drop down. Their highest run-getter this season, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, will have to drop down. The second-highest run-getter in the recent T20 World Cup, Tim Seifert, is not able to break into the KKR team.
"The combination, you always wrestle with...Eight overseas players of top quality in every team and so trying to find that balance is always going to be difficult," Finn Allen said on the eve of KKR's match against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in Chennai. "We've got some really good balance at the moment. Good players miss out and that's unfortunately the nature of the beast. Whatever combination we go with is going to be our best - whether it's Seif or Rovman - they're incredibly quality players. So, unfortunately we [Tim Seifert and I] have been separated, but that's the nature of the beast."
Given their lopsided team, KKR's best chance of getting their first win this season is perhaps through individual brilliance. For that they need to help Green lift the weight of the world off his shoulders and give him the freedom to bat as if the world is at his feet.
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