KOLKATA: It’s getting too close for comfort for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Their last two matches went all the way down to the wire with the hosts losing one and winning the other.
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Although the purple brigade is sitting pretty with 10 points at the halfway stage (after seven games) of their campaign, their bowlers’ performance has raised some concerns as they made heavy weather defending 220 plus totals at home.
They will hope for a far better and smoother finish against a struggling Punjab Kings side at the Eden Gardens here on Friday.
KKR broke their bank in the players’ auction to pick up Mitchell Starc, expecting the Aussie quick to lead their bowling unit. But as things stand now the left-hander has been far from impressive and although the team management had stood firmly behind him, it will not be surprising if they think about giving Starc a break.
The pacer suffered an injury in his bowling hand in the last game and in case he cannot not make it, Lankan pacer Dushmantha Chameera can get his first match of this season.
KKR posting four 200-plus totals in their seven games so far is mainly due to the breezy starts provided by Phil Salt and Sunil Narine. But their middle-order has not always been able to fully utilise that platform with skipper Shreyas Iyer, Venkatesh Iyer, Ramandeep Singh and Angkrish Raghuvanshi not being consistent. Maybe it’s time to give Manish Pandey a look-in before entering the business end of the competition.
It’s time for the lower-rung teams to desperately play the catch-up game now and climb up the points table and in that context, time is running out for Punjab who are languishing in the bottom half of the table with four points from eight matches.
PBSK bowling coach Charl Langeveldt has called upon his batters to “get more runs on the board” after another batting collapse against Gujarat Titans in their last match.
Except the uncapped duo of Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma, none of their batters like Prabhsimran Singh, Liam Livingstone, Rilee Rossouw and Jonny Bairstow have been able to take the attack to the rival camp.
Skipper Shikhar Dhawan will once again sit out after missing the last three games too with a shoulder injury. The opener’s absence has hurt the team badly.
However, they can expect a better show at the Eden Gardens, which promises more runs than their new home-base in Mullanpur. But they will have their task cut out against quality KKR spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy after the way their middle-order caved in losing seven wickets to the GT spinners in the last match.
Their pace attack of Kagiso Rabada, Harshal Patel and Arshdeep Singh might look impressive on paper, but has not proved menacing this season so far.
Coming on the back of four losses in a row, the team will need every player to raise his hands now.
