Kolkata Brace up for Chennai Charge

Kolkata: It's still early days in the tournament, but defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders are already feeling the heat. Three defeats in as many matches on the road, including a self-inflicted one in Mohali last Tuesday, have pushed them to the bottom half of the table.

The way out of the hole for Gautam Gambhir's inconsistent Knights is to take advantage of playing at home thrice over the next seven days and win at least two of them, if not all three. The Knights start off this crucial phase on Saturday against two-time champions Chennai Super Kings, the team they dethroned in last year's final to deny them a hat-trick of titles.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has said time and again that he doesn't believe in the word 'revenge' in sport. But this is one match 'Captain Cool' would no doubt hate to lose. It's true that Chennai have been, rather uncharacteristically, caught napping twice at home this season, but the Men in Yellow showed champions' mettle in shrugging off a morale-crushing defeat at the hands of Pune Warriors with an 86-run hammering of Delhi.

Two of his trusted lieutenants Murali Vijay and Suresh Raina are yet to fire, but the skipper himself has been in imperious form, smashing game-changing 30s and 40s in quick time.

And Dhoni is not the only match-winner in the CSK ranks. They have in Ravindra Jadeja, Mike Hussey, Dwayne Bravo and Raina cricketers who can take the game away from the opposition in a jiffy. Add new South African import, gangling pacer Chris Morris to that list, and you have a formidable all-season outfit.

Before KKR start evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of CSK, they have to fix their batting unit. It will also be interesting to see if KKR sacrifice spinner Sachithra Senanayake to strengthen the batting.

Teams from:

Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (captain), Manvinder Bisla (wk), Brendon McCullum, Brad Haddin, Brett Lee, Debabrata Das, Eoin Morgan, Iqbal Abdulla, Jacques Kallis, James Pattinson, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Laxmi Shukla, Manoj Tiwary, Pradeep Sangwan, Rajat Bhatia, Ryan ten Doeschate, Sarabjit Ladda, Shakib Al Hasan, Shami Ahmed, Sunil Narine, Yusuf Pathan, Ryan McLaren, Sachithra Senanayake

Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (captain & wk), Albie Morkel, Ben Hilfenhaus, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Michael Hussey, Murali Vijay, Nuwan Kulasekara, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shadab Jakati, Srikkanth Anirudha, S Badrinath, Suresh Raina, Wriddhiman Saha, Baba Aparajith, Vijay Shankar, Akila Dananjaya Perera, Chris Morris, Jason Holder, Ben Laughlin, Dirk Nannes, Ronit More, Mohit Mahipal Sharma, Imtiaz Ahmed, Ankit Rajpoot, R Karthikeyan

Match facts
Saturday April 20, 2013 (day/night)
Start time 16:00 local (1030 GMT)