On this date — May 26 — last year, Kolkata Knight Riders had won their third IPL crown. This year, their players are all heading home after failing to make the playoffs.
Of course, given the competitiveness of the IPL, winning back-to-back titles is never easy, even though Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians have done so in the past.
One may say that the Knights’ inability to chase down a paltry target of 112 against the Punjab Kings, and squandering the advantage over Lucknow Super Giants and the Super Kings at home, hurt their chances of making the last-four stage. But a fair and proper analysis suggests that KKR were inconsistent right through their campaign. Even before failing to overhaul Punjab’s 111 in Mullanpur last month, they had won three and lost as many in their first six games, which reflects a sheer lack of consistency.
There are several aspects that led to the undoing of the Knights.
Auction bungle
Before the last auction, KKR released both Mitchell Starc and Phil Salt. They can’t quite be faulted much for not retaining Starc as the Australian speedster struggled in the league phase.
But not retaining Salt was a mistake, and it showed this season. The England white-ball opener averaged 39.54 with a strike rate of 182 last year, laying the foundation for the Knights in the Powerplay on several occasions. Yet, Salt had to go. And this year, KKR couldn’t stitch even one 50-run opening stand.
Sunil Narine tried his best to bat the way he does. But at the other end, Quinton de Kock looked scratchy, while Rahmanullah Gurbaz was mediocre.
The wrong Iyer
Vice-captain Venkatesh Iyer finished with just 142 runs in seven innings, having just one 50-plus (60) score to show. The Knights must have expected more from one of their costliest buys ever, who didn’t get to bowl even once in their entire campaign, being an all-rounder.
Yes, in franchise cricket, even a rookie batter can earn millions while an established one may go unsold. But in KKR’s case, some eyebrows did get raised when they let go of Shreyas Iyer — the man who captained the team to glory in 2024 and has since then been one of India’s best batters in limited-overs cricket — only to splurge ₹23.75 crore to buy back a player, whose performance wasn’t really out of the world last year.
To be fair to Venkatesh, he still has to work on his game to be consistent at the top level.
Pitch puzzle
Complaints against the Eden Gardens pitch, which has usually met the demands
of T20 cricket, seemed to shift focus from the more important things whenever the Knights had a home game. In fact, on most occasions ahead of their home matches, the pitch became more of a talking point than the areas they needed to work on.
In other words, the Knights got trapped in the puzzle they themselves created.
Rinku role
Following his five sixes off as many balls in Ahmedabad two years ago, Rinku Singh seems to have been typecast as a finisher by KKR when he’s much more than that. The left-handed batter is also quite capable of anchoring the innings, something he had proven with his crucial 25-ball 36 at No. 4 against the Delhi Capitals this year. But on most occasions, especially in the initial phase, Rinku didn’t feature in the top five of the batting order.
He tried his best, though, despite not getting enough balls to face. But it didn’t help.
Costly quicks
Even last year, the Knights were quite reliant on their spin duo of Narine and Varun Chakravarthy. But then, Vaibhav Arora and Harshit Rana had played the supporting role quite well, which they couldn’t this IPL.
Both Vaibhav and Harshit did take wickets, 17 and 15, respectively. But Vaibhav finished with an economy rate of 10.11, with Harshit 10.18. Besides, when Harshit acknowledged he was missing former mentor Gautam Gambhir’s “aura” in the camp, the franchise should have assigned someone like current team mentor Dwayne Bravo to help the pacer sort things out.
Lack of runs
Besides skipper Ajinkya Rahane, the Knights’ top run-getter with 390 runs, Angkrish Raghuvanshi was the only bright spot for the three-time champions. Focusing on proper cricketing shots, Raghuvanshi avoided being reckless, finishing with an average of 33.33 and a strike rate of 139.53. But with only two performers in their batting unit, the Knights could never scale the difficult peaks.