Knight Riders, the third rising
KOLKATA: One victory from an IPL double—winning it as a coach and player—brendon Mccullum still chews hard at a gum but now wears a luxuriant beard. From 2008 to now he has been part of three eras at Kolkata Knight Riders, seeing them through the whole arc—from floundering to fearless; from being overloaded with international stars to relying on uncapped Indians. Compared to the sides that won the Indian Premier League in 2012 and 2014, this is probably KKR’S poorest version. But what makes this journey more remarkable than the previous two successful campaigns is the team’s ability to emerge the better side despite their obvious flaws. Most of the international stars are either out of form or injured while their captain Eoin Morgan badly needs an innings of confidence. It’s not an ideal situation for an IPL finalist, not when you have teams like Chennai Super Kings or Mumbai Indians who have always maintained continuity in terms of a functioning core and unquestioned leadership. But in three distinct eras under 3 very different captains, KKR are proving to be uniquely successful after crossing the initial hurdles.
In 2008, Mccullum’s innings of 158 that came off 73 balls was the only century for KKR and gave the IPL the kind of bang for the buck it needed. But the team that also had Ricky Ponting, Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, David Hussey and Chris Gayle finished sixth. What followed was worse. As IPL moved to South Africa in 2009, Sourav Ganguly became one of the captains from being the only captain. “Chris Gayle, Brendon Mccullum and Ganguly will all captain KKR. There will be a nominated captain for each game,” said head coach John Buchanan. With three wins, KKR finished last and Buchanan was sacked; the franchise’s plan to build a team with him over five years in shambles following the debacle.
Buchanan was replaced Dav Whatmore but KKR, with Ganguly and Cheteshwar Pujara in the middle order, ended sixth again; the low points of the campaign being a 54-run defeat to
Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and the inability to defend 200 against Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings), both at home. Reason enough to ring in the changes and after three years of being consistently inconsistent, KKR decided to revamp the squad, lock, stock and without Ganguly. “KKR had nowhere to go after three disastrous seasons,” Joy Bhattacharjya, then KKR team director, said. “We had to do something. We needed top Indian batters, at least a core of two. We had nothing against Sourav Ganguly. But he retired from international cricket in 2008. To be fit to remain relevant till 2014 was difficult.”
Enter Gautam Gambhir, one left-hander replacing another as skipper and after scoring 97 in a World Cup final that helped India end a 28-year jinx. “We were perhaps one bid away from not getting him,” KKR CEO and managing director Venky Mysore, on whose idea the squad was overhauled in 2011, had told this paper in 2018 of the franchise’s record $2.4 million dollar purchase. Gambhir gave KKR a period of stability—for the first time—that fetched two titles (2012 and 2014) and three more playoff berths (2011, 2015, 2016). It was a time when Shah Rukh Khan would come for home games but it wasn’t to see him shake a leg that people packed the Eden. Yes, all eyes would turn towards his box when news coursed through the rafters that he was in the building, but in the upper tiers of the club house, they would also be calculating how much Robin Uthappa needed to score for the purple cap (in 2014, he aggregated 660) or how unplayable Sunil Narine was.
Bought for $700,000, Narine announced his arrival in the 2012 IPL on a warm April afternoon at an Eden hosting KXIP. He took 5/19, was adjudged Man of Match and though KKR lost, IPL and the mystery spinner became joined at the hips. With 24 wickets, Narine was instrumental in getting KKR to the final which they won even though CSK’S Suresh Raina ruined his bowling analysis (4-037-0). On Eden tracks known to be slow and low—not unlike what is happening in the UAE— Gambhir and new coach Trevor Bayliss (2012-14) would employ the choke on away teams through a combination of Narine, Shakib Al Hasan, Iqbal
Abdulla and Yusuf Pathan. If the spin punch didn’t work when they travelled, KKR had Brett Lee and Jacques Kallis.
With returns of 22 and 21 wickets in the next two seasons, Narine, through different coaches and captains, has become an integral part of the KKR playbook. His returns going into Friday’s final is 14 wickets from 13 games, 11 of them in nine games on resumption in UAE, with an economy of 6.44 is almost as good as it was in 2014 (6.35). It comes with an action repeatedly remodelled and one with which Narine said after Monday’s win against Royal Challengers Bangalore he was yet to achieve full potential. “Retaining Narine in 2018 was a big call of faith,” said Bhattacharjya. “In 2014 he was the top player so retaining him made sense. But in 2018 he was not the bowler he was in 2014. But now, Sunil is about 90% of what he was in 2014.”
KKR’S rebuild in 2018 after Gambhir left for the Delhi franchise focussed on young and uncapped Indians which led them to invest in Shubman Gill, Shivam Mavi, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Rahul Tripathi and Nitish Rana among others. Barring Nagarkoti, who has played only once this season, all of them have been important in KKR’S turnaround from two wins in seven games to getting into their third final. Not unlike it was in the 2012 final when another uncapped Indian Manvinder Bisla (89 off 48 balls) along with Kallis (69 off 49) shepherded KKR home against CSK. Captaincy changed hands in 2020 with Eoin Morgan, a World Cup winner and the third left-hander to lead the Knights, being elevated from being one in the leadership group after Dinesh Karthik stepped down. But Karthik leading the team talk against Delhi Capitals on Wednesday, directing the bowling from behind the stumps is proof of how important he is to Morgan, a man who despite poor returns with the bat has led with supreme confidence. “It’s a nice insight into our team culture, the young guys coming in feeling free to express themselves,” said Morgan after Wednesday’s win. “The backroom staff has created an environment for them to do this. With the squad we have, there’s expectation. Hopefully we can implement all that we have strategised.”