Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) is the franchise of IPL that represents Kolkata. The team is owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood actress Juhi Chawla and her spouse Jay Mehta. The home ground for KKR is the iconic stadium Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
The franchise gained a lot of popularity due to its association with celebrity owners. The team qualified for the playoffs for the first time in the year 2011. In 2012 and 2014, they became champions defending Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab respectively. The Knight Riders hold the record for the longest winning streak by any Indian team in T20s
Kolkata Knight Riders’ History
In 2007, the BCCI had created the cricket tournament IPL based on the Twenty20 format of the game. Eight teams participated in the inaugural tournament of IPL held in April- June 2008. The franchises are based in eight different cities of India. Kolkata Knight Riders were bought by Bollywood Superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s company Red Chillies Entertainment along with Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta for $75.09 million which equals Rs 2.98 billion at that time. Sourav Ganguly, the former skipper of the Indian team, current President of BCCI was the Icon player for the team. The team’s name has been inspired by the 1980’s popular American television series Knight Riders.
Kolkata Knight Riders’ Full Squad
Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy, Venkatesh Iyer, Sunil Narine, Shreyas Iyer, Pat Cummins, Nitish Rana, Shivam Mavi, Sheldon Jackson, Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Dar, Chamika Karunaratne, Baba Indrajith, Ashok Sharma, Pratham Singh, Abhijeet Tomar, Sam Billings, Alex Hales, Ramesh Kumar, Mohammed Nabi, Aman Khan, Umesh Yadav.
Strength
Kolkata Knight Riders have a really good spin duo Varun Chakraborty and Sunil Narine. It is a very positive sign for the team. They will capitalize the main strength in all the league games and apart from that Narine is a spectacular batter and will be scoring good runs for the team from his side. Shreyas Iyer had a very good performance as a batter and it is expected from him that he will score high runs for the time. The new player, Alex Hales can prove to be of great advantage for the franchise.
Weakness
Dinesh Kartik, who was the wicket-keeper, won’t be a part of the squad and there’s no first-choice wicketkeeper. Pat Cummins is the only bowler in the powerplay. It is important for an IPL team to have someone who can restrict the opponent batter with a strict line and lengths. They lack it at the moment.
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