Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders clash tonight at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad in what will be the inaugural match of the OPPO Champions League Twenty20 2014.
The Kolkata Knight Riders as we know are the IPL Champions while the Chennai Super Kings had finished in the third place in Pepsi IPL 2014. It will be a Group A clash between KKR and CSK which are led by Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni respectively.
Although KKR are the IPL champions, it is going to be the Chennai Super Kings who will be the favourites tonight. This is simply because the Chennai Super Kings have been very consistent whereas KKR can blow hot and cold. KKR are also without three key players – Morne Morkel, Chris Lynn and Shakib Al Hasan.
CSK are blessed with the destructive opening combination of Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith. Faf du Plessis has been in red hot form scoring plenty of runs in the recently held Zimbabwe Triangular Series. Dwayne Bravo who was injured during the IPL is fully fit and raring to go for CSK.
So far the Chennai Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders have faced each other 14 times. CSK has had the better with 9 wins whereas KKR has won five times.
The round robin league which has five teams in a group perhaps demands each team to win four matches to make it to the Semi Finals.
The CSK vs KKR match will begin at 8:00 pm IST and will be shown live on Star Sports Channels. Here is a full list of channels that will be showing the live coverage of CLT20 2014.
Chennai Super Kings Squad for CLT20 2014: Faf du Plessis, Dwayne Smith, Suresh Raina, Brendon McCullum, MS Dhoni (C&WK), Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishwar Pandey, Mohit Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Mithun Manhas, Pawan Negi, John Hastings, Samuel Badree
Kolkata Knight Riders Squad for CLT20 2014: Gautam Gambhir (C), Robin Uthappa (WK), Manish Pandey, Yusuf Pathan, Ryan ten Doeschate, Suryakumar Yadav, Andre Russell, Piyush Chawla, Sunil Narine, Vinay Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Jacques Kallis, Pat Cummins, Manvinder Bisla (WK)