Lucknow Super Giants skipper KL Rahul broke his silence on the chatter surrounding strike rate in T20 cricket during the IPL 2024 match against Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday. Both KL Rahul and Virat Kohli has faced a lot of criticism regarding their strike rates in this year’s competition despite being among the Top 5 run-scorers in IPL 2024. Rahul also found himself out of the India squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2024 with skipper Rohit Sharma and chief selector Ajit Agarkar saying that they were looking for middle-order batting options while choosing wicket-keepers and that is the reason why they went with Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson.

“We will bowl first. I’m not a best reader of a wicket, we just like chasing. The good thing is we have been able to adapt really well and quickly to the conditions, there have been quite a few brilliant individual performances as well. There’s been a lot of talk about strike-rate, and T20 cricket has changed a lot in the last couple of years. He was injured in the last game, Yash Thakur comes in for Mayank Yadav,” he said.

Coming to the match, Rahul won the toss and opted to field.

“We would have bowled as well. Defending that total with five bowlers in the last game gives us a lot of confidence. There’s a lot of self-belief in the team. We are going with the same team. Hopefully we continue with the same form. He has been optimistic from game one and just that he wasn’t able to execute. He (Venkatesh Iyer) got tremendous and character and happy for the way he executed. It’s important to stay in the present,” KKR captain Shreyas Iyer said at the toss.

Lucknow Super Giants vs Kolkata Knight Riders playing XI:

Kolkata Knight Riders:Philip Salt (wk), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Shreyas Iyer (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana

Substitutes:Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, KS Bharat, Sherfane Rutherford

Lucknow Super Giants:KL Rahul (wk/c), Marcus Stoinis, Deepak Hooda, Nicholas Pooran, Ashton Turner, Ayush Badoni, Krunal Pandya, Ravi Bishnoi, Naveen-ul-Haq, Mohsin Khan, Yash Thakur

Substitutes: Arshin Kulkarni, Manimaran Siddharth, Krishnappa Gowtham, Yudhvir Singh, Devdutt Padikkal