Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had a better than average campaign in IPL 2016. The team managed to qualify for the playoffs after winning 8 of their 14 games. The Gautam Gambhir-led team struggled many with their bowling in the tournament and relied heavily on West Indies all-rounder Andre Russell’s abilities. As soon as he was out to due to a leg injury in a match against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), KKR’s hopes of staying alive in the tournament looked dim. The match in which they were knocked against SRH though, was the result of some brilliant death bowling by the opposition and eventually, KKR fell 22 runs short. ALSO READ: Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) knocked out of IPL 2016
Kolkata Knight Riders had a good start to the season, thanks to their top-order. Gautam Gambhir lead from the front and won them matches while opening alongside Robin Uthappa. Gambhir at times even finished matches for KKR and at the end turned out to be the highest run-scorer for them. He had 501 runs in 15 matches for the side. Uthappa did score 3 fifties in the tournament but failed to make a big impact. Youngster Manish Pandey showed capability with the bat but this IPL didn’t out to be a good one. Although, he was selected in the Indian team for the tour of Zimbabwe, he would have liked to have a better IPL. ALSO READ: Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2016, Review: Marks out of 10
Middle-Order players Andre Russell and Yusuf Pathan contributed largely to KKR’s success. With immense power and calibre, comes great responsibility and the duo did justice to their potential. Russell scored 188 runs along with invaluable 15 wickets. Pathan hit 361 runs at quite an impressive strike-rate. But batting was never their concern.
The bowlers especially the pacers struggled and went for plenty throughout the season. Their economy rates were too high inspite of the wickets they took. Morne Morkel, Umesh Yadav and Ankit Rajpoot all struggled to keep control of things. They did take wickets, but couldn’t restrict the opposition at times.
The spinners did a fairly decent job. Piyush Chawla, Sunil Narine and even Brad Hogg (while he played), played their part well. But the limelight was on Kuldeep Yadav who impressed everyone with his left-arm spin. He took 6 wickets in 3 matches and even earned appreciation from star Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh.
KKR could not win the IPL for a 3rd time but they would have definitely taken many positives from the season and will look to come back stronger in the next season.
(Karan Dewan, a reporter with CricketCountry, loves following and playing sports. He is a Team India fan and loves winning. Follow him on his twitter handle @karan13dewan.)
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