Heading into Monday night’s home fixture against the Punjab Kings (PBKS), the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) were one of the three teams in IPL 2026 to have not yet won a single game. The other two winless teams so far are Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings, with KKR positioned in the ninth spot between these two on the points table.
The KKR vs PBKS contest at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata, began with Ajinkya Rahane winning the toss and electing to bat first, a surprising decision with the rain around.
The bombshell news that Rahane dropped at the toss was that KKR had to make two forced changes. And not just any players – it was both the KKR mystery spinners, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy, who had to sit this game out against Punjab.
KKR vs PBKS: Why Are Sunil Narine And Varun Chakravarthy Not Playing Today Against Punjab Kings?
Chakravarthy had sustained a hand injury while taking a catch in KKR’s previous match against SRH, and Sunil Narine is not well. Hence, both the spinners missed Monday’s match against PBKS, Rahane confirmed at the toss.
Narine and Chakravarthy were replaced with West Indies batting all-rounder Rovman Powell and India fast bowler Navdeep Saini. This is Saini’s first IPL game since 2023.
This is the first time since 2019 that KKR are not playing with either Narine or Chakravarthy in their side in the IPL. The absence of the duo meant that KKR took the field with only one frontline spin option, Anukul Roy, with Blessing Muzarabani most likely to come in as the Impact Player.
The duo has been far from their best this season. In two games, Narine has picked up one wicket and conceded runs at an economy of 9.85, and Chakravarthy has been even worse: 0 wickets in six overs and an economy of 13.16.
KKR are coming off a massive 65-run defeat that they suffered at the hands of SRH. And before that, they had gone down to Mumbai Indians, failing to defend 220.
On the other hand, PBKS have won both their matches so far, and they go into this fixture unchanged.
KKR vs PBKS Playing XI + Impact Subs:
KKR: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), Rinku Singh, Navdeep Saini, Anukul Roy, Vaibhav Arora, Ramandeep Singh, Kartik Tyagi
PBKS: Shashank Singh, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Marcus Stoinis, Arshdeep Singh, Cooper Connolly, Nehal Wadhera, Shreyas Iyer (c), Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Marco Jansen, Yuzvendra Chahal
PBKS Impact subs: Priyansh Arya, Suryansh Shedge, Vishnu Vinod, Pravin Dubey, Harpreet Brar
KKR Impact subs: Blessing Muzarabani, Manish Pandey, Tejasvi Singh, Rahul Tripathi, Saurabh Dubey
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