This time, last year, the vibe was a little different in the Kolkata Knight Riders camp. By April 3, 2024, they had played three matches, winning all of them. Cricket was at the centre stage not the pitch.
Circa 2025, and it’s still very early to press the panic button – only after three matches into the new IPL season. KKR have lost two of their first three matches, but they – any team for that matter – don’t have a divine right to win everything. It’s a long tournament and teams will lose matches during the course of it. There would be occasional batting implosions, a la KKR against Mumbai Indians at Wankhede, and bowling meltdowns. Bouncing back from reverses is what separates the top sides from the also-rans. And KKR are the defending champions.
Then again, it feels like mild thunderclaps are already being disgorged by the racing skies, to paraphrase Steve Coll, the Washington Post’s former South Asia bureau chief. Team morale was the first question, as Dwayne Bravo, KKR’s new mentor and Gautam Gambhir’s replacement, attended the pre-match press conference on Wednesday. The Trinidadian, who has won everything that T20 cricket can offer, put things in perspective.
“Two losses, but it’s still early days in the tournament,” Bravo told reporters. “We’re not the only team that has two losses and one win. But it’s important for us to bounce back and that is our main focus right now. And control the things that we can control, which are the future games, starting with tomorrow and I look forward to the remainder of the games.”
Take “control the things that we can control” as the operative words and compare it with the last season. External factors were kept at arm’s length and discourses centred around cricket – the tactical masterstroke of promoting Sunil Narine as an opener for example. This term, Ajinkya Rahane talking about the Eden Gardens pitch and asking for a little more turn after losing the first game probably didn’t send the right message to the dressing room.
Eden curator Sujan Mukherjee’s response to that, to RevSportz, flared up a national debate. But that should be water under the bridge now, especially after Bravo’s comment: “I don’t know much about pitches. For me, you turn up, you play, and the better team who plays best on the day will win the game.”
KKR shouldn’t allow the pitch factor to distract their focus. There’s a school of thought that their batting struggles when it is taken out of the ‘merry-swing’ comfort zone. That said, the gung-ho, one-dimensional batting approach, which fell flat on its face at Wankhede, isn’t only KKR’s problem.
“I think the batsmen are also not having that (much) value on their wicket anymore,” said Bravo. “They’re a bit reckless because they think as though it’s flat pitches. The Impact Player is there. A lot of teams have batted longer, so the value for batsmanship is no longer there.”
Another thing is that the players KKR let go of from their title-winning side have been in sparkling form for other teams – from Shreyas Iyer to Phil Salt and Mitchell Starc. Yes, it wasn’t possible to retain every player in a mega auction year, but it’s not easy to replace those voids.
Shreyas was outstanding as a leader last year. His replacement, Rahane, has a lot of credit in the bank as a captain. He masterminded arguably India’s greatest-ever comeback in a Test series, in Australia in 2020-21. KKR need their skipper to lead from the front, both on and off the field. They are playing at home against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday. They should use this as an advantage to bounce back. A defeat here might derail their campaign.
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