A demoralising defeat in their own den will certainly serve as a wake-up call for the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) bowlers as they take on a menacing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) batting line-up in the Indian Premier League (IPL), in Kolkata on Sunday.
On a batting beauty at the Eden Gardens, KKR will face the onerous task of stopping a back-in-form Chris Gayle and the ever dangerous Virat Kohli.
Having started off with four wins in five matches, Kolkata Knight Riders wilted against Suresh Raina’s assault to lose their first match at home on Friday as they brace for a bigger challenger when they face the resurgent RCB, in a second match in three days.
For a team that has shown super consistency in both batting and bowling, the timing of the loss will be hurting for Gautam Gambhir’s men.
It has come at a time when most of the teams, including the bottom-placed Gujarat Lions, have begun to look up while for KKR the slide has begun, having slipped to second place in the crucial mid-phase of the eight-team league.
Struggling to find their rhythm, the star-studded Kohli brigade have finally found their expression right with the familiar mayhem of Gayle.
Reunited with Kohli at the opening spot, Gayle cantered to 77 off 38 balls, his first halfcentury in 17 matches and went on to become the only batsman to scale Mt 10,000 in the T20 format.
Gayle and Kohli put together 122 runs in 76 balls, in an ominous sign for the KKR camp.
“We all love Chris Gayle’s batting, don’t we? Personally, I love the entire package of this man-mountain. He is a delight for marketing men, broadcasters, and of course us, the lesser mortals, his fans who were not surprised that he reached 10000 runs in this format.
“My fancy for a hitting option at the top tells me that I am reeling big time under Gayle-effect!,” Gambhir said before their loss to the Lions.
The Shakib-Al-Hasan formula did not work for Gambhir against the Lions as he conceded 10.33 runs per over. The skipper may resort to his trusted pace spearhead of Trent Boult to tackle the Gayle-effect.
Gujarat Lions may have chased down 188 with 10 balls to spare in a four-wicket win but in hindsight KKR’s bigger problem lies with wicketkeeping.
In order to play an extra batsman, they have resorted to part-time wicketkeeper Robin Uthappa who has been shoddy behind the stumps.
His latest drop of the season was the architect of last night’s win. Raina made full use of the reprieve on one off Sunil Narine to post a match-winning 84.
In such a scenario, it won’t be a bad ploy to relieve Uthappa of wicketkeeping and play Saurashtra lad Sheldon Jackson instead of Suryakumar Yadav who has failed to make an impact -- 29 runs at 7.25 average -- in four innings.
From 96/1 in 10 overs thanks to a Sunil Narine’s show at the top, KKR could only manage 187/5 from the stipulated 20 overs. Head coach Jacques Kallis admitted they were 10-15 runs short.
“With the start, we would have liked to get 200, so it was disappointing not to get those 10-15 runs more,” Kallis said.
Their weak bowling is an area KKR would like to exploit as they would hope to win the toss and hunt down the target in the familiar conditions.
