IPL 2022 | KKR report card: Left with more questions than answers, it is a season to forget for Knight Riders

Kolkata Knight Riders finished in the seventh place of the campaign after much debacle. They failed to select a steady lineup which ultimately led to their downfall. But is all really lost under the captaincy of Shreyas Iyer?

Kolkata Knight Riders kind of had it coming after the way they went about in the mega-auctions of the Indian Premier League. Lack of options in the overseas wicket-keeping department, Ajinkya Rahane as their first choice opener and a buying a dicy Englishman (Alex Hales), the red flags were present even before the tournament began.

After failing to settle on a combination in the first half of the tournament, KKR huffed and puffed in the end, needing five wins from their last five matches. To be fair to them, they won three out of those five, trying to put up their best performance, but it was too late. A total of six wins from 14 matches was taking Kolkata nowhere in this league.

Shreyas Iyer as a captain is a big step-up from an off-form Eoin Morgan. Iyer is tactically adept and a breathtaking player of spin, something that KKR needed this year. In his first season with the franchise where the team was being chopped and changed on a daily basis, Iyer stood tall, scoring 401 runs from his 14 matches, making it a successful debut season.

Rinku Singh has been a known commodity in the domestic circuit for a while and he has scored a truckload of runs under pressure. He had been with Kolkata for a while, but was not given a crack at the first XI. This time was a different story though. With such an unsettled squad, Rinku was given a chance and he took it with open arms. 174 runs in just 7 matches at a strike-rate of 149 is breathtaking for an uncapped player. He won KKR a game forming a crucial partnership with Nitish Rana, and almost snatched a win against Lucknow Super Giants with a blizzard innings of 40 off just 15 balls.

If given a chance, a 24-year old Rinku Singh can turn out to be a rock in the lower order for Kolkata Knight Riders.

There are multitudes that went wrong with KKR this season. Let’s get to them one by one.

Ajinkya Rahane has not been a T20 player for a while now, despite his best efforts. 133 runs at a strike rate of 104 meant that Rahane had a torrid season and failed to give KKR the start which they generally look for.