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IPL 2023, KKR vs RCB | Depleted Kolkata Knight Riders seek home comfort against star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore
The Hindu
Hit by injuries and unavailability of key players, two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders will seek home comfort and look to return to winning ways when they face a star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, in Kolkata on April 6.
Hit by injuries and unavailability of key players, two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders will seek home comfort and look to return to winning ways when they face a star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, in Kolkata on April 6.
Having started their campaign with a seven-run defeat via Duckworth-Lewis method against Punjab Kings at Mohali, KKR suffered twin blows.
First premier Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan pulled out of the tournament because of family reasons and international commitments and, the next day, regular skipper Shreyas Iyer, who is also their batting mainstay, was ruled out of the entire IPL as he will undergo a surgery to treat his back injury.
KKR had made Nitish Rana their stand-in skipper, assuming that their regular skipper would be back in the second half of the season but with Iyer ruled out completely, the Chandrakant Pandit-coached side may face a leadership crisis.
‘Accidental’ skipper Rana, who has experience of leading Delhi in white-ball cricket, has a big task ahead of him as the team desperately seeks some solace in its den.
The buzz is that KKR’s owner Shah Rukh Khan will be in the house when they return here after 1,438 days. They last played at Eden Gardens on April 28, 2019 — a 34-run win over Mumbai Indians before COVID-19 hit the world.
The excitement will be at an all-time high for both teams, with crowd-puller Virat Kohli in the visitors’ dug out.
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He has worn India’s blues, albeit in an Under-19 World Cup, with K.L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel and Jaydev Unadkat as his teammates. He has proudly adorned the Lion’s Crest — the famed Mumbai cricket logo — in all three formats. He has played with Yuvraj Singh, against Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid and has the likes of Rahul and Joe Root in his illustrious list of dismissals. He is also a software developer for an IT giant, based in California. Virtually every middle-class Indian over the last three decades at some stage dreams of being either a cricketer or an IT professional. Saurabh Netravalkar has been combining two dreams, even after relocating to USA to pursue academics at the prestigious Cornell University in 2015.