Calcutta: Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine again had a separate session with the ball under the supervision of spin bowling coach Carl Crowe at least 45 minutes before Kolkata Knight Riders’ training began on Sunday.
For Monday’s critical clash against a super-confident Gujarat Titans, who have won all their last three games, the Eden wicket to be used has a pretty decent covering of grass, which suggests lesser help for the spinners. This is the same wicket that was used for the Knights’ clash against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
As the Knight Riders were winding up their training, Venky Mysore, the franchise CEO and managing director, was seen speaking for quite some time with Eden curator Sujan Mukherjee and Cricket Association of Bengal president Snehasish Ganguly. It was learnt that regardless of the Knights’ pitch-related “requests”, the state association will be working in accordance with the BCCI guidelines.
A little bit of trimming hours before the game begins cannot be ruled out altogether, though. However, no matter how much grass cover is on the wicket, spin aces Varun and Narine will continue to hold the key for the home team against the Titans’ batting army of Sai Sudharsan, captain Shubman Gill, Jos Buttler and Sherfane Rutherford.
Irrespective of the amount of trimming, a decent covering of grass should be there on the surface, which gives Titans, the 2022 champions, the scope of including South Africa pace spearhead Kagiso Rabada in their XI.
For sure, the Titans are in a far better frame of mind than the Knights, who made a mess of a simple run chase of 112 against the Punjab Kings in their previous game. Such a capitulation does call for a few drastic steps.
So, for Monday, will the Knights effect changes in their XI, like picking Afghanistan keeper-batter Rahmanullah Gurbaz instead of the misfiring Quinton de Kock? Or, maybe use the power of former West Indies T20I captain Rovman Powell? At least as an Impact Player? Because the Andre Russell formula has clearly not worked.
On both Saturday and Sunday, Powell underwent intense nets sessions.
Although the Knights aren’t reading much into these, one of their premier batters, Rinku Singh, copped a blow to his right ribs on Sunday while taking throwdowns. Vice-captain Venkatesh Iyer was also applying an icepack on his right knee, while pacer Vaibhav Arora had hurt his right palm while trying to stop a booming drive from Russell during Saturday’s practice.
With Abhishek Nayar working with the batters, team mentor Dwayne Bravo dealing with the bowlers and the Caribbean players, head coach Chandrakant Pandit’s job now is looking after the “overall” matters of the team. But if the result isn’t a favourable
one on Monday, the situation may not get any better for the head coach.
