Kolkata Knight Riders will be eyeing a hat-trick of victories to set the early momentum when they take on a confident Delhi Capitals in a league match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.

The Delhi Capitals are high on a comfortable 20-run win over defending champions Chennai Super Kings, and will hope to wrap up their assignments on their second “home” ground with a win over KKR.

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Having said that, it won’t be a cakewalk for Rishabh Pant & Co as the Purple brigade is fresh from registering two back-to-back but contrasting victories in their previous outings. While they pipped the Sunrisers Hyderabad by a whisker at home, the KKR batters pummeled the Royal Challengers Bengaluru bowlers to notch up a dominating triumph in Bengaluru on March 29.

The KKR opening combo of Phil Salt and Sunil Narine, all-rounder Andre Rusell and Venkatesh Iyer have been in good nick in the first two games and would look to pose a challenge for the Delhi pacers. Skipper Shreyas Iyer also got some runs under his belt in the win against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

KKR will be mighty pleased with the impressive performance of rookie pacer Harshit Rana, picking five wickets in two outings, but will also be hoping their record buy worth Rs 24.75 crore Mitchell Starc to finally prove his worth in the tournament. The same will be expected from spinner Varun Chakravarthy, who has gone for runs aplenty.

On the other hand, DC will be hoping for opener Prithvi Shaw and veteran Australian David Warner to take advantage of Starc’s indifferent form, and provide a solid start. For the Delhi Capitals, their skipper Pant serves as the biggest motivation, as he came back after a couple of scratchy starts to slam his maiden fifty in his trademark fashion, enough to sound a warning to the opposition bowlers.

The lack of domestic power-hitters in the DC camp is a concern for the team, and the management will hope for the likes of South African Tristan Stubbs and Australian Mitchell Marsh to provide them the flourish towards the end. While Stubbs has showcased his big-hitting skills in patches, Marsh is yet to go ballistic, something which DC will be expecting in Vizag.

In the bowling department, South African Anrich Nortje is yet to find his rhythm as he returned to action after a long injury layoff. But the return of Ishant Sharma to lead the pace attack has compensated for Nortje’s below-par outings. The spin department, comprising India’s lead spinners Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, will have a huge role to control KKR’s big hitters in the middle overs.