By Prakash Nair 
Kolkata, April 2: Neither KKR nor SRH deserves to walk into tonight’s game with any kind of confidence. Both teams played their first match of IPL 2026. Both scored over 200. Both lost by six wickets. If that does not tell you something about the state of bowling in this tournament right now, nothing will.
Tonight at Eden Gardens, these two sides meet in Match 6. Toss at 7 PM, first ball at 7:30 PM IST. Star Sports on TV, JioHotstar on your phone.
One of them gets their season back on track. The other one starts doing the math on how bad their run rate looks.
The Last Game Still Stings for Both
KKR batted beautifully at Wankhede. Ajinkya Rahane got 67 off 40 balls. Young Angkrish Raghuvanshi, 19 years old, looked completely fearless and hit 51 off 29. The team put 220 on the board.
Then Mumbai Indians’ openers Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickelton walked out and basically treated it like a practice session. They put on 148 together in less than 12 overs. Game over before half the crowd had finished their popcorn.
SRH were in Bengaluru for their opener. Ishan Kishan, who is filling in as captain because Pat Cummins is injured, played one of the most brutal innings you will see this season. 80 runs off 38 balls. Their young batter Aniket Verma added 43 off 18. They posted 201 on the board.
RCB chased it with 26 balls to spare. Four and a half overs to spare. Against a 200-plus total.
So yes. Both bowling attacks are in real trouble heading into tonight.
KKR Are Missing Half Their Pace Attack
This is not an exaggeration. Matheesha Pathirana, their best fast bowler, picked up an injury during the T20 World Cup and is still not fit. Harshit Rana is out. Akash Deep is out. Cameron Green, the big Australian all-rounder who can chip in with useful overs, is not going to bowl tonight either.
What that leaves KKR is Vaibhav Arora and Blessing Muzarabani as their main pace options, with a few young names behind them who have barely played at this level.
Their spin duo of Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy has carried KKR’s bowling for years. But right now both of them look off. Chakravarthy has not been the same since South Africa batted him all over the park in the T20 World Cup. He looked uncertain at Wankhede, not the bowler who used to make batters look completely clueless. Narine was not much better either.
KKR head coach Abhishek Nayar said after the Mumbai game that it is a less experienced bowling attack, not a weak one. He talked about how having coaches like Dwayne Bravo and Tim Southee in the setup would help the younger bowlers grow. Fair enough. But growth takes time and tonight is a match that matters.
Interestingly, SRH head coach Daniel Vettori told his own players not to take Narine and Chakravarthy lightly. He said the battle against those two will be one of the key parts of the game. So even the opposition is not fully writing them off. That counts for something.
SRH Are Missing Their Captain and Two Pacers
Pat Cummins is not playing. He will not be available for the first half of the tournament. For SRH, that is huge. Cummins is not just a wicket-taker, he is the guy who sets the tone with the ball and makes the other bowlers around him look better.
Brydon Carse hurt his hand in the RCB game and will not play tonight either. David Payne keeps his place in the side.
Ishan Kishan leads the team in Cummins’ absence. He is a tremendous cricketer but leading a thin bowling attack without their best bowler is a different kind of challenge.
Why the Toss Matters So Much Tonight
The pitch at Eden Gardens tonight is the same surface that was used for the T20 World Cup semifinal between New Zealand and South Africa last month. New Zealand chased 170 in 12.5 overs that night. On the same ground. Finn Allen, who now opens for KKR, scored a century off 33 balls in that chase. He knows this pitch like the back of his hand.
There will be dew tonight. Kolkata in April, humidity at 78 percent, floodlights blazing, Eden Gardens right next to the river. The dew will come and when it does, the ball gets wet and slippery. Bowlers lose their grip. Batters can swing freely because the ball is not doing anything off the pitch or through the air. That massively favours the team batting second.
Across all IPL matches at Eden Gardens, the chasing team has won close to 59 percent of the time. Tonight that number will probably be higher. The toss winner bowls first. No question about it.
The Battles That Will Actually Decide This Game
Watch Finn Allen in the powerplay. He is the most in-form T20 batter on the planet right now. 732 runs this year, strike rate of 193. He also has special memories of this ground after that World Cup knock. If he gets going in the first six overs, SRH are chasing the game from ball one.
Watch Varun Chakravarthy against Abhishek Sharma. Sharma is one of the best T20 batters India has produced but he has been misfiring lately. Chakravarthy, if he gets a delivery to grip early, could get him before he settles. One wicket like that in the powerplay changes the whole shape of the innings.
Watch Sunil Narine against Heinrich Klaasen. Klaasen is one of the best players of spin in the world and his record against Narine is extraordinary. He has faced Narine eight times in T20 cricket and never been dismissed. He has hit him at a strike rate of over 163. Narine knows this and will try something different. That chess match in the middle overs is worth the admission fee alone.
And watch Ajinkya Rahane against Jaydev Unadkat. Rahane is playing his 200th IPL match tonight, becoming only the 11th player to reach that milestone in the tournament’s history. But Unadkat has dismissed him four times in six IPL innings. That personal rivalry has some history to it.
So What Needs to Happen
For KKR, the batting is not the worry. Allen, Rahane, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, this is a powerful lineup that can chase anything if the conditions suit. The question is whether Narine and Chakravarthy can rediscover something tonight. Just a few wickets in the middle overs. That is all they need to feel like themselves again.
For SRH, their top order needs to fire early and post a big total if they bat first, because their bowling does not inspire enough confidence to defend anything under 200. Head, Sharma, Kishan, Klaasen in that top four can destroy any attack on their day. But they need at least two of those four to play substantial knocks.
The Bigger Picture
KKR lead the all-time head-to-head record against SRH 20 wins to 10. At Eden Gardens specifically, they have won 8 out of 11 meetings. Home crowd, home pitch, better record. On paper KKR have the edge.
But paper does not bowl for you. KKR’s bowling last week looked genuinely alarming. And if their spinners do not find something tonight on a pitch that Vettori himself described as having more grass than expected, SRH’s batting could run riot.
Two games into the season and both these teams are already in a situation where they cannot afford to keep losing. The playoff picture is still far away but momentum and confidence in April either builds or breaks teams. A second straight loss for either side means hard questions at training the next morning.
Eden Gardens holds 66,000 people. It will be close to full tonight. The noise when Allen hits his first six or when Narine bowls something unplayable will be something else.
One team gets their season going tonight. The other one has a long bus ride home.
Match 6, IPL 2026. KKR vs SRH. Eden Gardens, Kolkata. April 2, 2026. 7:30 PM IST. Live on Star Sports and JioHotstar.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
