Royal Challengers Bangalore Captain Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bat first against Kolkata Knight Riders in the 31st Match of the IPL 2021. The match is being played at Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi.

KKR lead the head-to-head record against RCB by 14-13. However, RCB has defeated KKR 4 out of the last 5 times. In the first leg of the tournament, Bangalore defeated Kolkata by 38 runs at MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai where AB de Villiers and Glenn Maxwell played explosive knocks of 76* and 78. Playing XI of both teams are:

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) - Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Rahul Tripathi, Eoin Morgan(c), Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik(w), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Lockie Ferguson, Varun Chakravarthy, Prasidh Krishna

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) - Virat Kohli(c), Devdutt Padikkal, Srikar Bharat, Glenn Maxwell, AB de Villiers(w), Wanindu Hasaranga, Sachin Baby, Kyle Jamieson, Mohammed Siraj, Harshal Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal