Kolkata Knight Riders need to regroup quickly to keep their hopes afloat for making the playoffs in IPL 2025.

The Ajinkya Rahane-led team has only three victories from seven games and must win at least five more matches from their remaining seven to seal a last-four berth.

KKR have won only one of their three home matches so far and need to derive the maximum benefits from their remaining four. Last season, the defending champions had won five of their home games.

The Knights’ batting has been their biggest failure this season and it came to the fore again on Tuesday. Rahane was forced to admit it was “a collective failure of the batting unit” after being bundled out for 95 in 15.1 overs against Punjab Kings in Mullanpur.

He seemed infuriated and mentioned while speaking to the broadcasters that he needed to be “really calm” when talking to his teammates in the dressing room about the 16-run loss.

“It’s not like Punjab bowled very well. I think we played bad cricket as a batting unit. I take this responsibility as a captain that we couldn’t chase this down. But individually, I’m sure, all the players, especially the batters, will think about their own game and improve in the upcoming matches,” he said at the post-match news conference.

Rahane’s dismissal in the eighth over proved to be the turning point of the game. Yuzvendra Chahal trapped him lbw and he walked back without opting for the
review. Replays later revealed that the impact was outside off stump.

“As a batter, I thought that I could save the review for later. It shouldn’t happen that I take a review and lose it, then we are only left with one review,” Rahane said. “The communication (between him and Angkrish Raghuvanshi) wasn’t that clear. If someone clearly tells you that the impact can be out or it can miss, you take a review as a batter.

“But generally, the batsmen in front of you, you think about what they say. The communication wasn’t that clear: ‘Maybe it could be the umpire’s call, maybe it could be hitting’. That’s why I didn’t take a review. But again, no complaints. Apart from
that, we also were pretty bad as a batting unit. And that was the reason we lost
today (Tuesday).”

The Knights lost their last eight wickets for 33 runs as the Kings successfully defended 111. They will have to quickly recover and put this loss aside as a bad dream in a bid to bounce back into the top four.

Replacing Moeen Ali as the third spinner proved to be a bad choice too, given the amount of turn and bite in the surface. Instead, the visitors went with Anrich Nortje, who had a moderate outing in his first game this season.