Kolkata Knight Riders captain Nitish Rana and Mumbai Indians bowler Hrithik Shokeen had a heated exchange during their ongoing match at the Wankhede Stadium in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 on Sunday.
Rana was dismissed by Shokeen on the first ball of the 9th over after which the bowler gave the batter a send-off which he did not like at all.
Rana retaliated and charged towards Shokeen before being stopped by his MI counterpart Suryakumar Yadav.
Rana was seen hurling abuses at Shokeen before he went back to the dressing room.
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It must be noted that both Rana and Shokeen are teammates in the Delhi side in domestic cricket, but they are not on talking terms even in the dressing room.
The flare-up that happened on Sunday afternoon was not one-off since these two players have had a history between them.
Rana flopped with the bat on Sunday and departed for 5 off 10 balls.
KKR were 73 for 3 in 8.1 overs at the time of his dismissal with Venkatesh Iyer batting at the other end on 49 off 22 balls.
Arjun Tendulkar debuts for MI
Meanwhile, MI are being led by Suryakumar because regular captain Rohit Sharma is out with a stomach bug. MI have handed a debut to none other than Arjun Tendulkar, in place of Rohit.
Surya won the toss and elected to bowl first at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday.
23-year-old Arjun has played 7 first-class matches in which he's picked 12 wickets. From 7 List A games, the left-arm pacer has 8 wickets. In T20s, Arjun has 12 wickets from 9 matches.
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Venkatesh Iyer, N Jagadeesan, Nitish Rana(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Umesh Yadav, Lockie Ferguson, Varun Chakaravarthy.
Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Ishan Kishan(w), Cameron Green, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav(c), Tim David, Nehal Wadhera, Arjun Tendulkar, Hrithik Shokeen, Piyush Chawla, Duan Jansen, Riley Meredith.
