Live report - Kolkata Knight Riders vs Delhi Capitals at Eden Gardens

10m ago

15m ago

Suddenly a good length is a very good length. Sharp turn on the wrong'un from Varun, and Kumar Kushagra, stretching forward to defend, inside-edges into his pad, from where the ball loops to the keeper. Capitals are 111 for 8 now.

34m ago

Another miscue off Varun Chakravarthy - this time he was trying to slog-sweep him - and Pant goes, caught off a loopy slice in the covers. He hit Sunil Narine for a stunning six with a falling sweep early on, but he wasn't at his best thereafter. He goes for 27 off 20, and Capitals are 93 for 5 in 10.1 overs.

41m ago

Rishabh Pant gets a reprieve on 18. He welcomes Varun Chakravarthy by stepping acrosa and shaping for the scoop over short fine, but he doesn't get hold of it, and sends the ball ballooning to the right of Harshit at short third. He doesn't have too much distance to cover, and he's right under the ball when it reaches him, but it plops out of his hands. Could this be a pivotal moment?

52m ago

After taking punishment from Abishek Porel in his previous over, Harshit Rana comes back and gets his man. And it's no accident, because it's the result of an excellent sequence of deliveries. First, he switched to round the wicket to cramp the left-hander and deny him the room he'd gotten earlier. Then he banged in two well-directed short balls that Porel didn't get bat to. Then Porel looks to walk across his stumps and scoop Harshit fine, but he misses and is bowled by a full slower offcutter. Capitals are 68 for 4 in 6.4 overs.

1h ago

Harshit Rana plays for Delhi in domestic cricket but represents Kolkata, the capital of Bengal, in the IPL. Abishek Porel does the opposite thing. Today one bowls to the other and concedes 15 in five balls, and a single to Rishabh Pant (a Delhi boy in domestic cricket as well as the IPL) off the last ball of the over.

1h ago

Shai Hope came into this game on the back of a 17-ball 41 against Mumbai Indians, and he began like he was still playing that innings, hooking Arora for six off the third ball he faced. He can't do much about the next one, though, banged into a perfect length tight on off stump, pinning his feet in the crease, and then straightening to square him up and hit the top of off. Such a good ball from Arora. You could say the bouncer off the previous ball slowed his feet down, but the length of this ball was good enough to do that all by itself. Capitals are 37 for 3 in 3.3 overs.

That's Arora's seventh powerplay wicket of the season, by the way. He's joint-top of that list alongside Khaleel Ahmed and Trent Boult.

1h ago

1h ago

Prithvi Shaw was looking ominous, having hit Mitchell Starc for three fours off the first three legal balls of the match. But his innings is cut short by a strangle down the leg side off Vaibhav Arora in the second over. It wasn't given out on the field, but Shaw began walking as soon as wicketkeeper Phil Salt convinced his captain to call for a review. UltraEdge confirms there was a thin edge through. Capitals are 17 for 1 in 1.3 overs.

2h ago

Rishabh Pant wanted to bat first, Shreyas Iyer (says he) wanted to bowl first. The toss wasn't really necessary, then, but Capitals have won it. Interesting that Pant suggests the pitch looks a little slow, but could skid on a bit more in the evening - wouldn't it be easier to bat second then? Or maybe I misheard.

In any case, Prithvi Shaw is back for Capitals, replacing Kumar Kushagra, while Rasikh Salam also gets into their starting XI. A couple of changes for KKR too: Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora come into their XI.

Delhi Capitals: 1 Prithvi Shaw, 2 Jake Fraser-McGurk, 3 Abishek Porel, 4 Shai Hope, 5 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), 6 Tristan Stubbs, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Kuldeep Yadav, 9 Lizaad Williams, 10 Khaleel Ahmed, 11 Rasikh Dar. Bench: Mukesh Kumar, Sumit Kumar, Pravin Dubey, Kumar Kushagra, Ricky Bhui.

Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Phil Salt (wk), 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Venkatesh Iyer, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Rinku Singh, 6 Andre Russell, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Mitchell Starc, 9 Vaibhav Arora, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Harshit Rana. Bench: Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rahmanullah Gurbaz.

If this season has redefined what a good IPL total is, the redefining has begun at the start of the innings. And few have done this better than Sunil Narine and Jake Fraser-McGurk, who'll be up against each other tonight.

Here are a couple of stonking reads on this pair: Nagraj Gollapudi teases out the story behind the rebirth of Narine the T20 opener, and Sidharth Monga delves into how much of an outlier Fraser-McGurk is, even among the aggressive openers of his time.

2h ago

Those are the last three totals achieved by Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Capitals respectively. IPL 2024 has been a paradigm-shifting season, and these two teams have been among the foremost paradigm shifters. Tonight they meet at Eden Gardens, which has been one of the most punishing grounds for bowlers this season, so what can we expect today? It's safe to say neither of these teams is going to try to build an innings the old-school way.