IPL Auction 2022, KKR analysis: Kolkata Knight Riders build unstable squad after pressing the panic button – Firstcricket News, Firstpost

Kolkata Knight Riders arguably have the most imbalanced team on paper after two days of intense bidding. A large part of that is down to them spending 27.5 crores early in the auction on the trio of Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana and Pat Cummins. While the Iyer pick is understandable given that they wanted a middle-order anchor and captain, adding Rana on top of that crippled their chances to bid for more value for money players.

File image of Kolkata Knight Riders team from IPL 2021. Image: Sportzpics for IPL

Pat Cummins at a much lower price is a good buy, but KKR failed to build a good fast bowling group around him, instead splurging a further 7.25 crores on Shivam Mavi, who hasn’t quite proven himself yet in the big league.

A bad day one at the IPL auction forced KKR into panic mode and instead of identifying the right value options early on day two, they panicked and waited for the other purses to come down, eventually missing out on several good buys in the process. When it hit them that they did not even have a possible frontline wicketkeeper and were also short of backup batters, KKR went into another bout of panic buying. They bought a series of Indian domestic batters after also giving Ajinkya Rahane a deal with none of them likely to make the first-choice XI.

The late bids for Alex Hales and Sam Billings saved their auction to an extent, but it could only minimise the damage by so much after what was a horrible couple of days for them.

Kolkata Knight Riders squad:

Batters: Shreyas Iyer, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Pratham Singh, Alex Hales (o)

Wicketkeepers: Sheldon Jackson, Sam Billings (o), Baba Indrajith

Spinners: Mayank Markande, Murugan Ashwin

Fast bowlers: Shivam Mavi, Rasikh Salam, Ashok Sharma, Tim Southee (o), Umesh Yadav

Spin-bowling all-rounders: Sunil Narine (o), Nitish Rana, Anukul Roy, Mohammad Nabi (o)

Fast-bowling all-rounders: Andre Russell (o), Venkatesh Iyer, Pat Cummins (o), Chamika Karunaratne (o), Ramesh Kumar, Aman Khan

Strong area

There are a fair few things wrong about this Kolkata Knight Riders line-up, but they eventually managed to put together four overseas players that could form the core of their line-up in the 2022 season at least, if not going forward. Alex Hales is the perfect foil for Venkatesh Iyer at the top, sorting the lack of firepower they had last year in the top three.

With Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Pat Cummins locked in as the other three overseas players, KKR have a nice blend of options. Chamika Karunaratne, while not the highest quality, is a budget replacement pick for Russell and Sam Billings can step in as wicketkeeper if they have an overseas slot vacant. Mohammad Nabi covers for Narine while Southee can step in when Pat Cummins is unavailable, a likely proposition at the start of the tournament given Australia’s fixtures.

Area of concern

There are too many concerns that it is impossible to identify one. The obvious lack of a solid first-choice wicketkeeper forces them to be rigid with their plans. Unless Hales or one of the all-round overseas players sit out, Billings cannot step in and the Indian wicketkeeping options are below average. There’s of course the stop-gap option to keep with Hales, an occasional wicketkeeper, but that’d be a risky move with bowlers of the likes of Narine and Varun Chakravarthy to keep to.

The lack of good Indian quicks is another gaping hole they weren’t able to plug. Shivam Mavi, while decent, isn’t quite in the category of quicks who can perform a job in any phase. Umesh Yadav would also struggle to make the starting XI.

The number of anchor-style batters in the top-order is also worrying and leads to a familiar problem: Russell not having enough overs to make an impact with the bat.

Best buy: Alex Hales for 1.5 crores

Worst buy: Nitish Rana for 8 crores

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