Confident Knight Riders out to break the Mumbai Indians jinx

For Mumbai Indians, there are two things that are as constant as the pole star. One, they don't win their tournament openers - they've lost every opening fixture since 2013. The other is their utter dominance over Kolkata Knight Riders, having won 21 of the 27 completed matches, including nine in the last ten. Therefore, the defending champions should be quite comfortable facing their favourite opponents in search of their first win of IPL 2021.

Their defeat to Royal Challengers Bangalore wouldn't have caused many headaches. Despite their hallowed middle and lower-middle order failing - a failure only because of the high standards they've set for themselves - they lost only off the last ball. Their two latest recruits, the tall left-arm seamer Marco Jansen and the big-hitting Australian Chris Lynn proved they were good buys as well, taking 2 for 28 and top-scoring with 49 respectively. It's just need a question of winning the small moments that they lost in their first game.

But this is not the Knight Riders that almost conceded victory whenever they faced Mumbai previously. Under Eoin Morgan, they showed in their opening-game win just how they will be playing this season. They will not be afraid to play the big shots, even if wickets fall in a flurry, and their uncapped Indian batsmen Nitish Rana and Rahul Tripathi are high on confidence after hitting half-centuries against Sunrisers Hyderabad. With the ball, Shakib Al Hasan showed why he has replaced Sunil Narine in the XI and captain Morgan wriggled the side out of few difficult scenarios by using his bowling options smartly.

However, the pace unit Knight Riders will be facing will be vastly different from the Sunrisers game, with Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult bringing more pace and hostility. If they can take care of the two quicks, and should their hard-hitting middle-order outscore Mumbai's powerful counterparts, then they will be well placed to become IPL 2021's early pace-setters.

de Kock is out of quarantine, has trained with the team, and is available for selection. It's likely he'll come in for Chris Lynn, who made his debut the other night. Zaheer Khan, Mumbai's bowling coach, has also said that Kieron Pollard - and not Hardik Pandya - is their preferred sixth-bowling option, for now. Hardik's bowling workload is being consciously managed, but he does remain available to bowl.

Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt) 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Ishan Kishan, 5 Hardik Pandya, 6 Kieron Pollard, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Rahul Chahar/Jayant Yadav, 9 Marco Jansen, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Shubman Gill, 2 Nitish Rana, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Andre Russell, 5 Eoin Morgan (capt), 6 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 7 Shakib Al Hasan, 8 Pat Cummins, 9 Prasidh Krishna, 10 Harbhajan Singh, 11 Varun Chakravarthy

"Rohit is unbelievable against KKR. Having said that, it takes one ball to get anyone out and we need to get him early. He scores against KKR every time, maybe this time he won't, and then we'll be able to put pressure on Mumbai."
The Knight Riders' Harbhajan Singh is banking on the law of averages to strike

"It's a good headache to have. We are lucky and fortunate to have such a squad where people are waiting to grab those opportunities and pushing each other."
Zaheer Khan on whether Chris Lynn or de Kock would open on Tuesday