Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) skipper Ajinkya Rahane won the toss and elected to bowl first against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Friday in the 25th encounter of the ongoing Indian Premier League. MS Dhoni made a much-anticipated return to captaincy for the Chennai-based side following Ruturaj Gaikwad‘s injury. Currently, KKR are placed at the sixth spot of the IPL 2025 points table with four points in five matches, whereas the Chennai-based franchise is on ninth with two points from their five matches.

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Chennai have lost four games in a trot and will try to make their comeback in the tournament under Dhoni.

KKR also coming from a loss fought a close battle against Lucknow, but they went down by four runs.

KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane said at the toss, “We’ll bowl first. There were a lot of positives from the last game. We as a team played really well. It is about improving each game. (On the pitch) This looks like a good wicket, won’t change much. We are batting deep, so that’s why we look to bowl first and chase things down. One change – Moeen Ali comes in for Spencer.”

CSK captain Dhoni would have batted and stated that the wicket slows down later.

“We were looking to bat first. Quite a few occasions where we tried to chase it down and what we realised is that the wicket slows down a bit, so if you don’t get a good start then the middle order comes under pressure. (On Ruturaj) He has fractured something on his elbow, so he is ruled out of the tournament. He is a very authentic batter, someone who looks to time the ball well. So yeah, he will be a big miss. (On the importance of winning this game) It is important now, every game is important. We have lost too many matches and now it is important to do the basics right – have dot balls, take our catches. A couple of games we lost by big margins, but otherwise it was about the small things – about one over going for 20 runs. Our batters are more authentic as batters, they won’t slog everything. They just need to back their instincts. It is important to start well, get boundaries early on and try to get a couple of early wickets as well. Couple of changes for us – Tripathi comes in for Ruturaj, and Anshul Kambhoj in for Mukesh,” Dhoni said.

Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock(w), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane(c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Moeen Ali, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy.

Chennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Rachin Ravindra, Devon Conway, Rahul Tripathi, Vijay Shankar, Shivam Dube, MS Dhoni(w/c), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Noor Ahmad, Anshul Kamboj, Khaleel Ahmed.