Mumbai eye hat-trick victories

Keeping alive their hopes of making into the play-offs this season after two successive victories, defending champions Mumbai Indians will be eyeing for a hat-trick of wins, when they face Kolkata Knight Riders again in a span of three days Eden Gardens on Wednesday.

Rohit-led Mumbai, after having a poor start in the tournament, have changed their fortune in the last two games following a morale-boosting win to keep themselves alive in the race of top four.

However, fifth-placed Mumbai will face tough challenge from Kolkata Knight Riders who host this game with an ambition to change their poor winning graph against the visitors.

They have lost seven consecutive matches against Mumbai, with their last win coming in 2015. They also hold the record for the most number of defeats against a single opponent (17) versus Mumbai.

Mumbai's batting in this season has revolved around former KKR batsman Suryakumar Yadav, who is leading the chart as the team's highest run scorer with 399 runs from 10 innings.

But skipper Rohit has struggled to find his form, scoring just 231 runs. However, he will be hoping to produce a brilliant knock in Eden, where he has some beautiful memories from the past.

Mumbai will also be having high expectations from the duo of Krunal and Hardik Pandya to carry on with their good form. The duo has raised their performance graph after poor start in the campaign and have played a crucial role in the last two wins for the side.

On the bowling front, Hardik (14) and Mayank Markande (13) lead the charts , while Bumrah and McClenghan have provided them good support with eleven scalps each to their name.

On other hand, KKR's batting revolves mainly around the likes of skipper Dinesh Karthik and big buy Chris Lynn, who have been their consistent performers so far, scoring 316 and 277 runs respectively from ten innings. Apart from them, the franchise will also be hoping that Robin Uthappa carries on with his good run after the former MI player scored his first fifty of the season at Wankhede.

In the last game, U-19 World Cup star Shubman Gill was promoted to open the innings for KKR, but he failed to deliver and was dismissed after scoring seven runs.

On the bowling front, the spin trio of Narine (12 wickets), Kuldeep and Chawla (8 wickets each) have worked well for KKR. However, the pace unit looks lackluster. Mitchell Johnson (2), Tom Curran (5) and young Shivam Mavi (3) have disappointed with their performances and have been leaking too many runs.