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
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