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Indian Premier League (IPL) defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) are in a precarious position ahead of the upcoming season as they would be without the services of previous season’s mentor Gautam Gambhir, assistant coach and academy head Abhishek Nayar and assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate. The trio have joined the Indian cricket team as head coach and assistant coaches respectively, and certainly leave a void in the KKR dugout.While Dwayne Bravo has joined the side as mentor, other positions need to be filled.
In addition to the backroom staff, early indications are that the captaincy role is not straightforward either. Shreyas Iyer joined KKR when he was bought for Rs 12.25 crore at the 2022 auction and it’s understood that the franchise is willing to retain the Mumbai batter but not as their top retention.
Ahead of October 31 deadline, Andre Russell is the front runner to be retained with a hefty price tag. The all-rounder was earlier retained for Rs 12 crore by KKR and is very likely to get a substantial raise.
If things don’t go per Iyer’s liking, will he explore different options? In case he looks that way, the right-hander is expected to set the auction on fire because many teams – Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Punjab Kings, Delhi Capitals – are in the need of a captain. And an Indian captain is always sought after.
Punjab won’t mind loosening their purse strings for the right-hander considering he had a successful partnership with Ricky Ponting, now PBKS head coach, at DC and the two were together when they reached the final in 2020.
Equally, don’t be surprised if DC explore the Iyer option, too, because he was a proven leader for them and Rishabh Pant has asked to not be considered as skipper.
Even last year, when Iyer was returning from injury lay-off, there was a section in the KKR camp which wanted to continue with Nitish Rana, who was standby captain in Iyer’s absence, as leader for 2024 season.
The franchise, however, “announced” Iyer as captain before the tournament got underway. The statement did raise a few eyebrows as Iyer was the original captain and Rana was only doing the job in his absence, and many felt the announcement was absolutely unnecessary.
Shah Rukh Khan co-owned KKR are one of the franchises who advocated for a smaller auction, and pushed for more Right to Match (RTM). It’s a strategy they are likely to use at the upcoming auction.
There are more tempting retention options in Rinku Singh, Harshit Rana (uncapped), Mitchell Starc and Varun Chakravarthy but it will be interesting to see how much the defending champs are willing to spend.
They have a problem of plenty on that front but it’s their captaincy piece which would be keenly followed by other franchises too.
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