The 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is starting today. The first match of the tournament will be played in Kolkata between defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB).
The last season of the league was played between Kolkata and Hyderabad. In this, Kolkata won the IPL title for the third time by beating Hyderabad by 8 wickets. Meanwhile, Bengaluru is looking for its first title.
Match Details, First Match KKR VS RCB Date: 22 March Stadium: Eden Gardens Stadium, Kolkata Time: Toss – 7:00 pm, Match started – 7:30 pm
Next in Kolkata Head to Head Kolkata is ahead of Bengaluru in the head to head match. There are 35 IPL matches between the two. Kolkata won 21 and Bengaluru won 14. Both teams clash 12 times on Eden Gardens, with KKR won 8 times and RCB has won only 4 times.
World Class All -rounders in Kolkata Following the departure of Shreyas Iyer, Kolkata's arch has been entrusted to Ajinkya Rahane. All -rounders include Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh and Venkatesh Iyer. The team also has good bowlers like Varun Chakraborty, Spencer Johnson, Vaibhav Aurora and Harshit Rana.
Match Winners like Hazelwood and Bhubaneswar near Bengaluru Bengaluru has often struggled with his bowlers in the IPL, but the team has included match winners players like Josh Hazelwood and Bhubaneswar Kumar for this season. However, the team lacks a match winner spinner. Karnal Pandya is the most experienced spinner of the team. The franchise has appointed Rajat Patidar as captain for IPL 2025.
Pitch report The Eden Gardens is convenient for the pitch of the stadium. The stadium has so far played 93 IPL matches. Here the batting team has won 38 matches and the chass who have won 55 matches. The highest team score at the stadium is 262/2, which was scored by Punjab Kings last year against Kolkata.
Weather report The weather will not be good in Kolkata on March 22. In some areas there is a possibility of rains occasionally in the morning. There will be a cloudy day all day, the possibility of rain is 74%. On this day, the temperature is expected to be between 21 and 28 degrees.
Possible Playing-11 Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) of both teams: Ajinkya Rahane (Captain), Sunil Narayan, Quinton de Kock (wicketkeeper), Venkatesh Iyer, Angkrish Raghuvanshi/Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramanadeep Singh, Spencer Johnson, Vaibhav, and Vaibhav.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB): Rajat Patidar (Captain), Virat Kohli, Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma (wicketkeeper), Tim David, Karnal Pandya, Bhubaneswar Kumar, Josh Hazelwood, Yash Dayal and Suyash Sharma.
Where can you see the match? The live stream of the match will be on the JioHotstar app and website. Broadcasting on TV will also be made on Star Sports Network and Network 18 channels.
Image Credit: Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).