For most of Thursday’s match against Delhi Capitals, Kolkata Knight Riders players hardly showed the zeal to make things happen. The team seemed to be gripped with the fear of losing and the lack of positive intent showed in the players’ body language.
Last season’s runners-up now need a miracle to make the playoffs. With only three wins from nine matches, they have hardly delivered their promise to play “fearless cricket”, so essential in this format.
Captain Shreyas Iyer admitted that not being able to find the right opening combination has been a major concern. This has largely been responsible for their failure to garner enough runs in the Powerplay overs.
KKR have tried four different opening combinations and 19 players this season, the most by any franchise, with little success. Ajinkya Rahane and Venkatesh Iyer opened the innings in the first five matches and the 43 they stitched together in 6.2 overs in the opener against Chennai Super Kings remains their highest.
Aaron Finch and Sam Billings have been tried out while the move to fall back on Sunil Narine in a desperate situation over the years didn’t pay off this time. That none of the openers could bat for long periods only led to more pressure being created on Shreyas and Andre Russell, their most successful batters with 290 and 227 runs, respectively.
The opening woes have also resulted in KKR shuffling their batting line-up regularly, leading to five losses on the trot.
“It’s been really difficult for the last few games because we are not able to set the right opening pair, because there is a lot of chopping and changing happening,” Shreyas said. “I feel when you are playing in this league you need to have the right combination right from the first game. If you click, you can take it ahead from there on.”
Venkatesh Iyer, who scored 370 runs in 10 matches at an average of 41.11 and strike-rate of 128.47 as an opener in his debut season last year, has not been able to strike form and was pushed down the order for the two games before being made to open again on Thursday.
Venkatesh’s average (16.50) and strike rate (97.77) provide the perfect picture to his sordid state this season. The legendary Sunil Gavaskar has blamed it on the “second-season syndrome”.
In barely seven months, Venkatesh has seen his stock decline rapidly. There’s more information and data for the bowlers on his repertoire of strokes, making it easy for them to find effective ways to bowl at him. The coaches and players are better prepared for him this season, the rippling effects of which are being felt in the KKR ranks.
Moreover, with no clarity about his role, having batted up and down the order too much, Venkatesh is finding the going tougher. He has got only one fifty this season and has to bat time to regain confidence. The fact that his opening partner has also been struggling hasn’t also provided him with much leeway.
Not just Venkatesh, the failure of another retained player, Varun Chakravarthy, has remained a topic of much scrutiny.
Life has turned a full circle for the mystery spinner. Having been the highest wicket-taker in 2020 and 2021 IPL seasons for KKR, Chakravarthy is now struggling to keep his place in the XI. He was benched for the match against Delhi Capitals.
In eight games this season, Chakravarthy has only four wickets to show at an average of 61.75 and an economy of 8.82. To add to his woes, he wasn’t even allowed to complete his full quota of four overs in his last three games.
Nothing seems to be working for him and there’s talk that he has been sorted out. His lack of penetration has often been attributed to the conditions. The low and slow surfaces in the UAE for the past two seasons coupled with bigger grounds were more suited for his bowling — 17 wickets in 13 matches in 2020 at an economy of 6.84 and 18 wickets in 17 matches at an economy of 6.58 last year.
The pitches in Mumbai and Pune are believed to be more loaded in favour of the batsmen and pacers with their steep bounce and good carry.
Chakravarthy will soon have to devise a Plan B to wriggle out of this madness. He has never been a big turner of the ball and has depended on subtle variations. Maybe the time away from the team could encourage him to go back to the drawing board, chalk out what’s going wrong and reboot himself.