KOLKATA: Kolkata Knight Riders seem to have taken a step back to recreate the future. It has been 10 long years since the purple brigade last lifted the IPL trophy and to bring about a change in fortunes, they have roped in their two-time title-winning skipper
Gautam Gambhir
, whose return as the team’s mentor has created an air of expectation.
It’s often said that a good beginning is half the job done and KKR will look to make a winning start when they open their campaign against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Eden Gardens here on Saturday.
It appears that KKR will have a smooth ride against the woodenspooners of last season, but this SRH unit looks quite different, at least on paper.
If the Knights will be looking towards Gambhir for guidance from the dugout, it will be Mitchell Starc, whom KKR got for an all-time auction high of Rs 24.75 crore, who will hold the key inside the ground.
The Australian left-arm pacer is expected to lead the side’s otherwise inexperienced pace attack of Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora and Chetan Sakariya. If the ODI World Cup winner can provide the muchneeded breakthroughs in the powerplay and restrict runs at the death, it can be a challenge for all IPL sides to get going against KKR’s spin trio of Sunil Narine, Suyash Sharma and Varun Chakravarthy in the middle overs.
Jason Roy pulling out due to personal reasons can act as a blessing in disguise as his replacement Phil Salt, currently the world’s No. 2 T20I batter, has only boosted KKR’s batting.
With Narine, Andre Russell and Starc picking themselves, it will be a choice between wicketkeeper-batters Salt and Rahmanullah Gurbaz at the top for an explosive start.
Skipper
Shreyas Iyer
’s return will strengthen KKR’s middle order, which also features Nitish Rana,
Rinku Singh
, Manish Pandey and Russell. Venkatesh Iyer can return to open after KKR experimented with a few pairs in the past two seasons.
With back-to-back poor seasons, SRH have gone for quite an overhaul. While
Pat Cummins
took over the captaincy from Aiden Markram, Daniel Vettori became the franchise’s third head coach in three seasons when he replaced Brian Lara in the role.
Cummins called it a “good problem to have”, but the team’s fortunes will depend much on how they will handle their strong foreign contingent.
Cummins, Travis Head, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, Glenn Phillips, Wanindu Hasaranga and Marco Jansen are all capable of single-handedly winning games, but sadly SRH will have to bench some of them.
So their domestic batters like Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi and Abhishek Sharma along with bowlers
Bhuvneshwar Kumar
, T Natarajan, Umran Malik, Jaydev Unadkat and Mayank Markande will have important roles to play. The pitch can also be tricky after remaining covered for the past few days due to inclement weather, which remains a concern on match day too.
English (US) ·