Kolkata Knight Riders - Squad Analysis

Two Time Champions!

Two time champions - Kolkata Knight Riders, will be playing under the captaincy of the Indian wicket-keeper batsman, Dinesh Karthik for the first time in the IPL. The Shahrukh Khan owned franchisee showed their belief in the Indian youngsters and set up a whole new squad to carry on with the team's mantra of Korbo Lorbo Jeetbo!

Kolkata Knight Riders would enter into the Vivo IPL 2018 with a 19-member squad. Perhaps. the biggest change in the squad is the absence of Gautam Gambhir, who really changed the fortunes of the Kolkata Knight Riders and led them to two title victories. KKR for sure would not only miss Gambhir - The Captain, but also Gambhir - The Batsman this year. To be fair, the KKR squad looks quite unbalanced on paper.

The overseas players would be the key for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Chris Lynn, Andre Russell and Sunil Narine would need to play a major role if the team would want to qualify for the play-offs. Tom Curran was recently named as the replacement of the injured speedster from Australia, Mitchell Starc, and would be an integral part of the pace bowling-line up.

They have a very good spin bowling department as well, consisting off Kuldeep Yadav, Piyush Chawla and ofcourse, Sunil Nairne. These three bowlers would play a hugely important role in KKR's fortunes this year. They do have quite a number of T20 match winners in their squad, however, they have quite a few issues to address to as well.


Dinesh Karthik & Robin Uthappa will be the key batsmen in the middle order this season for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Nitish Rana, Shubman Gill and Ishank Jaggi will be the rest of the batsmen. That clearly shows the lack of experience in the squad. They don't have any finishers except for Russell either. Dinesh Karthik can finish games, but he would need to bat throughout everytime then, which is a little unlikely. Ishank Jaggi can be used as a finisher, but then you would need to open with Narine, which maybe good and maybe bad as well, certainly a risk. A middle muggle over there for the Knights!

Tom Curran has replaced Mitchell Starc!

Here is my Playing XI from the squad:

1. Chris Lynn

2. Robin Uthappa

3. Shubman Gill

4. Dinesh Karthik (Captain & WK)

5. Ishank Jaggi

6. Andre Russell

7. Sunil Narine

8. Piyush Chawla

9. Kuldeep Yadav

10. Kamlesh Nagarkoti

11. Tom Curran

A big middle muggle for the Kolkata Knight Riders, not even Nitish Rana could find his place in my team, because if you played Rana, you would have needed to push Gill down the order, or Rana himself would have needed to play at 5, which won't really help a lot. Not sure what would the Dinesh Karthik & Co. decide, but here is the most probable Playing XI from the squad.  

Cheers,

Sparsh