Picture credit : Debasis Sen
Watching Kolkata Knight Riders’ practice sessions can sometimes be boring. Beyond the fun football that serves as the prelude, it’s about sticking to the process. Andre Russell wows with his close control when they play football. At the nets, he sends the ball into the stands for fun.
KKR’s nets sessions give a feel that the team is running on autopilot. This is despite the fact that they have lost their title-winning captain, Shreyas Iyer, and larger-than-life mentor, Gautam Gambhir. Credit goes to the KKR management for retaining the winning core although, in a mega-auction year, it was impossible to keep hold of all the key players who took them to IPL glory in 2024.
They lost their impact opener Phil Salt but brought in a like-for-like replacement in Quinton de Kock. Mitchell Starc has been replaced with another left-arm Australian seamer, Spencer Johnson. To complement the latter’s inexperience, Anrich Nortje has been roped in to cover the more experienced overseas fast bowler’s spot. After an impressive debut season in 2024, Angkrish Raghuvanshi is expected to fill in for Nitish Rana. There’s a question mark over Ajinkya Rahane’s batting position, but his leadership credentials are beyond doubt. Once KKR had to part ways with Shreyas, they needed to address the captaincy issue. The defending champions have chosen a proven leader.
A winning dressing room is a happy dressing room, and KKR thrive on a team atmosphere where the likes of Varun Chakravarthy and Harshit Rana can seamlessly gel with the side, after coming back from the Champions Trophy. Both had their first training sessions at Eden Gardens on Tuesday. If Varun looked a little flat at the nets, it was probably down to him holding his variation cards close. This is something that Rohit Sharma had spoken about, tongue firmly ensconced in cheek, during the Champions Trophy. Asked about how the India batsmen countered Varun’s trickery at the nets, the skipper had said: “He doesn’t show his variations during practice.”
At 33 years of age, Varun is in the form of his life. It needed Steve Smith’s skill-set to decode him in the Champions Trophy semi-final, but even the Australian master couldn’t take the attack to the Indian spinner.
Spare a thought for Sunil Narine, self-effacing almost to the point of being a shrinking violet, when he is not spinning a web around the opposition or giving the ball a Hail-Mary tonk with the bat. Through several tweaks in his bowling action – he was reported six times between 2014-15 and 2020 – he has been demystified, but not defanged. With 17 wickets and 488 runs, opening the innings, the Trinidadian made the biggest impact during KKR’s title-winning campaign last term. The 36-year-old has been spending extra hours at the nets.
Overall, KKR’s playing XI – rather the XII, including the Impact Sub – looks set for the tournament opener against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on March 22. And this is what it might look like…
Probable XII: Sunil Narine, Quinton de Kock, Ajinkya Rahane, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Spencer Johnson, Varun Chakravarthy, Vaibhav Arora (Impact Sub).