Kolkata Knight Riders, for the crunch IPL 2026 encounter against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Friday, retained the same winning XI yet again, meaning Matheesha Pathirana will not play the match, despite having rejoined the team almost two weeks back.
KKR announced an unchanged squad for the encounter, meaning that Finn Allen, Cameron Green, Rovman Powell and Sunil Narine still make up the four overseas players.
Pathirana has been training with the squad on a regular basis after having recovered from a hamstring injury that he sustained during the T20 World Cup, but is still being managed by the franchise as they do not want to rush him into a competitive outing.
Dwayne Bravo Gives Injury Update
Speaking to the media before the encounter, KKR mentor Dwayne Bravo stated the rationale behind resting the pacer yet again.
During pre-match conference, Bravo said:
"He is very close to playing but we are not willing to risk him at all due to the nature of the injury. We all would love to have him back but it is a matter of timing and it's really great to have someone of his caliber back with us in the squad."
Despite reports suggesting that Sri Lanka Cricket have themselves cleared him for selection, KKR is choosing to proceed with extreme caution given Pathirana's recent injury profile, and would also want to avoid tampering with an XI which has won the team 3 straight encounters.
As of now, no official statement from the franchise has been released regarding the precise nature of the injury or a possible return date for the Sri Lankan.
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KKR Opts to Bowl First Against Delhi
Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane has won the toss and decided to bowl first against the Delhi Capitals. Rahane stated that the different types of behavior of the Delhi pitch was responsible for the decision.
Rahane said:
"We're going to bowl first. The last 3-4 games whatever we saw, it's been kind of very different games, 264, 160, the low scoring game against RCB as well, so I thought it's important to see the wicket, see how it's playing and then it becomes easier to bat on. But having said that, no winning the toss, losing the toss, it's all about playing good cricket of 40 overs."
KKR Playing XI: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Kartik Tyagi, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy.
Delhi Capitals Playing XI: Pathum Nissanka, KL Rahul (wk), Nitish Rana, Sameer Rizvi, Tristan Stubbs, Axar Patel (c), Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar.
