KKR Playing 11 2022: KKR Probable Playing 11 2022 IPL

KKR Probable Playing 11 2022 IPL: Kolkata Knight Riders are among the four teams who have bought a maximum of 25 players for IPL 2022.

Having splurged opulent amount of money in the initial phase of Indian Premier League 2022 mega auction, there was a time when a few franchises had hardly made any transactions but Kolkata Knight Riders were left with only INR 20 crore.

Despite that, KKR were brave enough to bid in excess of INR 10 crore for West Indies wicket-keeper batter Nicholas Pooran. Had Sunrisers Hyderabad not bought Pooran for INR 10.75 crore, Kolkata would’ve received a hard-hitting batter at the cost of compromising on a large part of their squad.

Subsequently, Knight Riders made some wise decisions to put together a 25-member squad for a whopping amount of INR 89.55 crore. KKR, who will be sans Shubman Gill, Eoin Morgan and Dinesh Karthik in IPL 2022, have made interesting buys as potential replacements of these players.

Having said that, one still feels that they’ve missed out on strengthening their middle-order. However, what seems to be a void on paper can very well be perceived as opportunities for rookie players on a cricket field. With no dearth of Indian batters in their current squad, expect the team management to try out a few of them this season.

KKR Probable Playing 11 2022 IPL

IPL 2021 was a breakthrough season for Madhya Pradesh all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer. A maiden IPL season soon got converted into white-ball debut for India in both the formats. One of their four retained players before the auction, Kolkata shouldn’t think twice before making Iyer open with England batter Alex Hales.

The presence of Ajinkya Rahane, Abhijeet Tomar and Pratham Singh has it in it to fuel up the debate around opening with two Indian batters to accommodate an overseas all-rounder in the middle-order. But benching Hales could hand the team a certain disadvantage especially after considering the kind of form he has been in this format in recent years.

Another school of thought for Knight Riders would be to include wicket-keeper batter Sam Billings as their fourth overseas player in place of Hales and open the batting with two Indian batters. Worth brainstorming, the move will still come at an expense of leaving an in-form batter in Hales out.

10th highest run-scorer in T20s, Hales is the second-highest run-scorer in the format since his last international match amassing 3,787 runs at an average and strike rate of 32.93 and 150.40 respectively. Hales, who has played in the Pakistan Super League, T20 Blast, Caribbean Premier League, Mzansi Super League, Big Bash League and The Hundred in this period, has hit two centuries and 22 half-centuries.

Known for his aggressive moves both as a player and coach, Knight Riders head coach Brendon McCullum might also be tempted to open with Hales in IPL 2022. India batter Shreyas Iyer, their most expensive IPL 2022 player at INR 12.25 crore, will accompany Nitish Rana to form a strong Top Four.

The next two batting positions will be up for grabs among uncapped Indian batters namely Sheldon Jackson, Rinku Singh, Baba Indrajith and Aman Khan. Jackson, who has represented KKR on just four occasions (in 2017) in spite of spending a few seasons should finally get a long run as a wicket-keeper batter.

“Rinku [Singh] was part of KKR academy in 2018 and he’s a homegrown boy for us and he’s an amazing fielder. He is fun and a quintessential team-man in a way,” Jhanvi Mehta, daughter of KKR co-owner Jay Mehta, had told Star Sports during one of the breaks on the second day of auction in Bengaluru. Much like Jackson, Rinku also deserves a proper run on the back of being part of the Kolkata franchise for some years now.

The least amount of pondering which McCullum, Kolkata’s new captain and the rest of the team management will have to do is with respect to their bowlers. Having retained three of them from last year, Knight Riders did pretty well to buy back the likes of Pat Cummins and Shivam Mavi in the auction. As a result, they now have a replica of their IPL 2021 bowling attack.

KKR Playing 11 2022

1) Venkatesh Iyer 2) Alex Hales 3) Shreyas Iyer 4) Nitish Rana 5) Sheldon Jackson (wk) 6) Rinku Singh 7) Andre Russell 8) Sunil Narine 9) Pat Cummins 10) Shivam Mavi 11) Varun Chakravarthy