We still have a fair chance, says Gambhir

Ranchi: His team is virtually out of the play-offs race having lost eight of their 13 matches, but an optimistic Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Gautam Gambhir on Saturday said they still have a "fair chance" of making the cut in the ongoing Indian Premier League.

"At the moment, the competition is pretty open. We still have a fair chance of reaching the play-offs. For me what matters is the remaining three games and we face RCB on Sunday, which is a must-win game for us. Hopefully, we can try and deliver," Gambhir told reporters on the eve of the match.

The Virat Kohli-led RCB are coming off a win against Delhi Daredevils and asked how KKR plan to counter the likes of Chris Gayle, Kohli and AB de Villiers, Gambhir said, "We do not strategise against individuals.

"We do not discuss individuals; we will only look to do what we do best and stick to our strength."

The KKR captain is also pinning his hopes on Sunil Narine to counter the strong RCB.

"We have played on this track, a spinning one and can benefit Sunil Narine," he said.

Talking about his side`s bowling attack, he said, "KKR is not dependent only on its spin bowlers. If you see in the tournament, Jacques Kallis and L Balaji too have done well for us, which are great signs for us.

"Spinners have been successful for us, they have been different, and they have not been conventional spinners. Our bowling unit on the whole has been good."

Gambhir said his team would look to win its remaining three matches. Kolkata have to their credit 10 points from thirteen games.

"We are looking forward to win all the three matches. Be it any situation, we as a team enter the ground thinking about a victory. We do not play to participate. We will look to play some good cricket and get a win."

The city will also host the KKR versus Pune Warriors match on May 15.

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IPL 2013: RCB face KKR in Ranchi`s IPL debut

Ranchi: Inching closer to a playoff berth, Royal Challengers Bangalore will face an inconsistent Kolkata Knight Riders, who would be eyeing revenge, when the two sides clash in the city`s first Pepsi IPL game at the Jharkhand Cricket Association`s International stadium on Sunday.

It is exactly a month since the two teams clashed in Bangalore where Chris Gayle blew away KKR with a 50-ball 85 that was laced with nine sixes.

Riding on Gayle`s brilliance and some other notable performers, RCB are among the top-four in the points table while KKR are languishing in the bottom half.


Both teams will go into the match high on confidence winning their last games. While KKR comprehensively beat a hapless Pune Warriors, RCB pulled off a thriller against the Delhi Daredevils on Friday.

For RCB, Gayle`s rather quiet outings in the past few matches would be a concern. But that has more or less been compensated by the likes of skipper Virat Kohli, who was quite impressive during his 58-ball 99 in the previous match.

Also finding his feet is the fit-again Cheteshwar Pujara, who would be expected to play the sheet-anchor role given that he is not exactly a big-hitter.

In fact, batting is hardly a concern for RCB with pinch-hitters like Moises Henriques and A B de Villiers making up the lower half of their line-up.

KKR, in contrast, have been throughly exposed as a brittle batting unit. Though skipper Gautam Gambhir found some of his lost touch with a half-century against Pune but that would hardly make up for the failure of others against a team like RCB.

Veteran all-rounder Jacques Kallis has been struggling and similar is the case with expensive-buy Yusuf Pathan, who has not been able to justify the captain`s continuing faith in him.

On the bowling front, RCB came in for some thrashing on Friday night even though medium-pacer Jaydev Unadkat stood out with a fiver in four economical overs conceding just 25 runs.

But the likes of Vinay Kumar and Henriques leaked runs at 10 per over and that would certainly be a cause of concern for the team.

KKR`s bowling, on the other hand, delivered against Pune but that can hardly be a measure of how good they are given that the Warriors are a team in doldrums.

Given their current form, RCB would start outright favourites and it would be interesting to see if KKR manage to get the better off their mighty opponent.

Teams (from):

Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir (C), Manvinder Bisla, Yusuf Pathan, Jacques Kallis, Rajat Bhatia, Laxmipathy Balaji, Sarabjit Ladda, Brad Haddin, Debabrata Das, Iqbal Abdulla, Brett Lee, Ryan McLaren, Eoin Morgan, Sunil Narine, Sumit Narwal, Suchitra Senanayake, Pradeep Sangwan, Shami Ahmed, Shakib Al Hasan, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Ryan ten Doeschate, Manoj Tiwary, James Pattinson.

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (C), A B de Villiers, Abhimanyu Mithun, Abhinav Mukund, Andrew McDonald, Arun Karthik, Cheteshwar Pujara, Chris Gayle, Christopher Barnwell, Daniel Christian, Daniel Vettori, Harshal Patel, Jaidev Unadkat, K P Appanna, Karun Nair, Mayank Agarwal, Moises Henriques, Murali Kartik, Muttiah Muralitharan, Pankaj Singh, Prasanth Parameswaran, R Vinay Kumar, Ravi Rampaul, Rudra Pratap Singh, S Aravind, Sandeep Warrier, Saurabh Tiwary, Sheldon Jackson, Sunny Sohal, Syed Mohammad, Tilakaratne Dilshan, Vijay Zol, Zaheer Khan.

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