Will we or won't we?

Official Kolkata Knight Riders Instagram Page (@kkriders)

I haven’t written in a while. But I’ve been meaning to express so much about our up and down season so far. In fact, just like how we went off the boil in the most important phase of the tournament, I went off the boil as far as keeping this blog active is concerned. Anyway, as it stands, we haven’t been guaranteed qualification as yet, thanks to our back to back losses against our nemesis MI, the kind of losses that hurt the most. I’m just not able to get around the fact that we’ve lost so many games against them in the recent past, and the last one particularly was the most bitter pill I’ve ever digested as yet, when it comes to our losses against MI.

We’ve just won against KXIP after scoring a mammoth first inning total, our highest in the history of the IPL. And I’m not surprised that I find myself channeling my thoughts down here when the team has split its losses and wins. 6 games and 6 losses with a negative NRR shouldn’t make any fan comfortable, not just me. So what are my 5 most significant thoughts about this team as of today?

Russel’s inconsistency and fitness: It’s disheartening to see, arguably, our most valuable player look like he’s being tortured into playing every match. It’s no secret that Russel is not hundred percent fit, but  what’s even more disheartening is to realize that our bench-strength is just not good enough to give him a couple of games of rest to recover. He is walking a tight rope at the moment and has been extremely inconsistent for a player of his importance to a team. A team that deserves to win the IPL would’ve had a proper replacement for a player that is having the kind of season that Russel is. In fact, I can just replace Russel with Lynn in this paragraph and every sentence would still hold true.

The incompetent bowling attack: Our incompetent bowling attack is incompetent because of the absence of a genuine quick bowler who DK can trust to take wickets up front, and bowl well at the death. It again comes down to our poor bench strength, especially when you take into consideration that an injury free team would’ve meant that Mitchel Stark would’ve been spearheading our pace attack. Both Johnson and Curran have been uninspiring, which means that our spinners carry the extra burden to not just contain, but also take wickets. What happened to Kuldeep in that reverse MI fixture was one of the repercussions of this burden. The bitter truth for a fan is that we do not have the bowling to win the IPL.

An unsettled combination with 2 league games to go: In this post a couple of weeks ago, I spoke about how we’ve finally managed to hit that ideal team combination. Call it a jinx or call it anything you like, we’ve only displayed the opposite ever since. This point is co-related with point number 2, which again comes down to the weak bowling. The top half of our squad on paper looks fine, but it’s that bottom half that causes the imbalance. Bringing Searles in against our reverse KXIP fixture was an interesting move, a ‘nayi soch’ in IPL sponsorship terms. Yes, we even won the game eventually, but is it convincing enough to believe that Searles was indeed the missing piece in our team combination puzzle? Not convincing, but certainly lends positive thoughts.

DK’s inspiring performance with the bat: One of the biggest positives for us this season is that our skipper is performing, which is so good to see. Yes, he couldn’t get us over the line against MI at the Wankhede, but he cannot be doing everything by himself. Our openers have been inconsistent, Robin has been getting the starts but not converting, Rana hasn’t scored as much as he should and can, I’ve already spoken about Russel, and Gill just hasn’t got the exposure that he needs to display his full potential (barring that lovely 57 against Chennai). Our batting is our strength, and DKs form as captain is very reassuring for a fan in more ways than one.

We CAN and WE WILL qualify: This point is dedicated to the emotional KKR fan, just like the one who is writing this down. It’s not completely foolish and silly even for a neutral to believe that KKR can still qualify, simply because we do have the arsenal just about good enough to make the cut. Yes, we might have to depend on other results and other team NRR’s, but irrespective, I strongly foresee a 3^rd or 4^th place finish. And given that both, the Eliminator and Qualifier 2 are taking place at the den, a fairy tale climax is very much on the cards. 

An emotional KKR fan has expressed his emotions indeed!