IPL 2023, Match 9: Depleted Kolkata Knight Riders Seek Home Comfort vs Star-Studded Royal Challengers Bangalore

Hit by injuries and unavailability of key players, two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders will seek home comfort and look to return to winning ways when they face a star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, at Eden Gardens on Thursday. Having started their campaign with a seven-run defeat via Duckworth-Lewis method against Punjab Kings at Mohali, KKR suffered twin blows. First premier Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan pulled out of the tournament because of family reasons and international commitments and, the next day, regular skipper Shreyas Iyer, who is also their batting mainstay, was ruled out of the entire IPL as he will undergo a surgery to treat his back injury.

KKR had made Nitish Rana their stand-in skipper, assuming that their regular skipper would be back in the second half of the season but with Iyer ruled out completely, the Chandrakant Pandit-coached side may face a leadership crisis.

'Accidental' skipper Rana, who has experience of leading Delhi in white-ball cricket, has a big task ahead of him as the team desperately seeks some solace in its den.

The buzz is that KKR's owner Shah Rukh Khan will be in the house when they return here after 1,438 days. They last played at Eden Gardens on April 28, 2019 -- a 34-run win over Mumbai Indians before COVID-19 hit the world.

The excitement will be at an all-time high for both teams, with crowd-puller Virat Kohli in the visitors' dug out.

KKR looked a shadow of their past in their season-opener, which was interrupted by a floodlight glitch before the skies opened up.

Iyer's absence has made the batting feeble. A quick-fire fifty-run partnership between Andre Russell and Venkatesh Iyer, who was promoted to No. 4, was the highlight of their batting