Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain Rishabh Pant won the toss and opted to bowl against hosts Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) under cloudy skies at Eden Gardens. The previous fixture at this venue, on April 6, was washed out after just 3.4 overs. It rained on Thursday afternoon, too, but the weather then cleared to allow the toss to take place at 7pm IST as scheduled.

Faf du Plessis, though, noted that the outfield was a bit wet in the lead-up to the match.

While LSG were unchanged from the previous win against Sunrisers Hyderabad, KKR welcomed Sunil Narine back in place of Zimbabwe quick Blessing Muzarabani. Narine had recovered from an illness that had put him out of Monday’s washed-out game against Punjab Kings. Their other mystery spinner, Varun Chakravarthy, however, was not fit yet. “Varun is still recovering from his hand injury,” KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane said.

Prior to the toss, Cameron Green marked his run-up and Rahane said: “When he is allowed to bowl, the combination becomes better”. Rovman Powell and Finn Allen were the other overseas players in KKR’s bat-first XI. Seamer Vaibhav Arora could come in as an Impact Player when KKR bowl later in the evening.

LSG have the option of bringing in Ayush Badoni as an Impact Player when they chase. They can also summon Matthew Breetzke if needed, having picked just three overseas players in their bowl-first XI.

LSG bowl-first XI: 1 Mitchell Marsh, 2 Aiden Markram, 3 Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), 4 Nicholas Pooran, 5 Abdul Samad, 6 Mukul Choudhary, 7 M Siddharth, 8 Avesh Khan, 9 Mohammed Shami, 10 Digvesh Rathi, 11 Prince Yadav

Impact Subs bench: Ayush Badoni, Matthew Breetzke, Shahbaz Ahmad, Mayank Yadav, Himmat Singh

KKR bat-first XI: 1 Finn Allen, 2 Ajinkya Rahane (capt), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), 5 Rovman Powell, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Anukul Roy, 10 Navdeep Saini, 11 Kartik Tyagi

KKR bench: Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Tejasvi Singh Dahiya, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert