The Indian Premier League’s newest season is around the corner and they are all set to host the 15^th season of the festival league. The new season will be witnessing a lot of twists, turns, tension, and suspense while also featuring two additional franchises i.e. Ahmedabad and Lucknow. If you are new to IPL or an enthusiast who wants to delve into the details about the franchises, you have slid into the right place. Here we will be discussing the IPL veterans, the Kolkata Knight Riders. An overview of Kolkata Knight Riders’ history, squad, news, retentions, and fixtures will be provided below.

Kolkata Knight Riders – An Overview

Kolkata Knight Riders, commonly known as KKR are an IPL franchise based in Kolkata. Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, actress Juhi Chawla, and her spouse Jay Mehta own the franchise. Knight Riders play their home matches at Eden Gardens Stadium.

The association with popular mainstream celebrities earned them countrywide popularity. They qualified for the first time in 2011. In 2012, they lifted the Indian Premier League title by defeating the defending champions, Chennai Super Kings in the finals. They bagged their second title in 2014, defeating Kings XI Punjab. The Kolkata Knight Riders also hold the record for the longest winning streak by any Indian T20 team.

Gautham Gambhir holds the record of the leading run-scorer in the team and the lead-wicket taker is Sunil Narine.

The team was purchased by Shah Rukh Khan’s company Red Chillies Entertainment in partnership with actress Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta for a quoted price of 75.09 million dollars. The current president of BCCI, Sourav Ganguly, a former Indian skipper and a native of West Bengal was named the icon player of the team.

Kolkata Knight Riders – Season review

Result summary against oppositions

Notable players of Kolkata Knight Riders

One of the main attractions of the Kolkata Knight Riders team was the skipper Sourav Ganguly himself. He was made the icon player and led the team in the 2008 and 2010 seasons. The gap year captaincy slot was filled by Brendon McCullum. Though they were the main attraction of the team, both were released after the 2011 season.

The original team of KKR included some of the iconic players in cricket history like Chris Gayle, David Hussey, Mohammad Hafeez, Angelo Mathews, Ricky Ponting, Salman Butt, Umar Gul, Shoaib Akhtar, Ishant Sharma, and Murali Karthik, etc.

The franchise had purchased the Bangladeshi all-rounder Mashrafe Mortaza at an exuberant amount of 600000 dollars at the 2009 auction. Kolkata Knight Riders had to suspend the contract of Umar Gul due to the unavailability of the Pakistani players. Umar Gul was one of their key players. Shoaib Akhtar, Salman Butt, and Mohammad Hafeez were released along with Umar Gul. Shane Bong was acquired by KKR after the release of Ricky Ponting and Morne Van Wyk.

Kolkata Knight Riders completely overhauled their squad in the 2011 season. Sourav Ganguly remained unsold in the January auction. The team appointed Gautam Gambhir as the new skipper after a frenzy of protests regarding Ganguly’s selection status.

KKR brought back their former interim skipper Brendon McCullum. They purchased Sunil Narine, who would later become one of their top players across seasons. They later added four domestic players to the squad, including Debabrata Das and Iresh Saxena from Bengal, Chirag Jani from Saurashtra, and Sanju Samson from Kerala. However, the team released the latter three from their squad along with Jaydev Unadkat.

Pat Cummins, the Australian Test skipper is one of the notable players on the squad as he was purchased at the 2020 IPL auction. He was bought in for Rs 15.5 CR. The World Cup-winning captain of the English squad, Eoin Morgan was also made part of the squad for Rs 5.25 CR. The captaincy was handed over to Eoin Morgan by Dinesh Karthik soon after he was bought in by the team on 16^th October 2020.

Kolkata Knight Riders – Retained players 2022

Venkatesh Iyer, an IPL 2021 debutant had scored 370 runs and 3 wickets in 10 games this season. Therefore he has been retained by the Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs 8 crores. Varun Chakravarthy has also been very instrumental in the success of the franchise from the last two seasons. He was retained for Rs 8 crores as well. Andre Russell, the kind of player who can pull off miracles in crucial times, a hard hitter, and a wonderful bowler, a complete asset to the team, was retained for a justifiable amount of Rs 12 crores. They had also retained another key player, Sunil Narine, who they can depend on unconditionally, for Rs 6 crores.

Kolkata Knight Riders – Rivalries

Against Mumbai Indians

Kolkata Knight Riders are considered one of the most successful franchises in the history of the Indian Premier League. A team with a success like that will also be a part of rivalries among other competitors in the league. One such rival team they constantly compete against is Mumbai Indians.

A similarity among them is, both the franchises play in major markets as the Mumbai Indians play in the city of Mumbai and Kolkata Knight Riders play in the city of Kolkata. Until Mumbai’s third championship, both the teams were tied with two championships. Mumbai wiped Kolkata off in the first two seasons of IPL. Kolkata did not manage to win over Mumbai until the 2010 IPL season.

There were other attractive reasons for the rivalry as well. Mumbai Indians were captained by the legend Sachin Tendulkar and Kolkata was captained by the aggressive king Sourav Ganguly. Mumbai has won 22 out of 29 meetings that they have had Kolkata has only 7 wins against Mumbai.

Both the teams met in playoffs for the first time in 2011 when they played against each other in the eliminator. Mumbai had won the match by four wickets and made it into the next round to eventually lose to Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Mumbai Indians held an eight-game winning streak against Kolkata Knight Riders from a period of 2015 to 2018. Later, in 2019, Kolkata went on to break the streak by posting a mountain total of 232 runs and won the match by 34 runs. Andre Russel became the talisman of the match by scoring 80 runs while Hardik Pandya of MI scored 91 runs that went in vain.

Against Royal Challengers Bangalore

The rivalry between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders is one of the oldest and biggest rivalries in the history of the Indian Premier League. Both the teams met for the first time in the inaugural match of the IPL where KKR established the victory by 140 runs due to the firework batting of McCullum who scored 158* off just 73 balls.

In 2012, KKR needed to win the crucial match against RCB as they were at the bottom half of the league table. KKR won the match after Gambhir led the team from the front scoring 93 off just 51 balls. Though Chris Gayle tried to make a comeback with 86 off 58, Lakshmipathy Balaji cut them through their batting lineup taking 4 wickets by giving just 18 runs in 4 overs leaving RCB at just 129 runs.

Both the teams locked horns once again in 2017 and it was a disastrous season for RCB. In the initial match between them, RCB managed to put KKR on a leash by allowing them to score only 131 runs. Though this was the case, KKR killed the batting side of RCB closing them down to their lowest score of Indian Premier League, which is 49 runs all out.

Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers showed batting fireworks by scoring 84 off 49 and 63 off 32 respectively letting RCB reach a total of 205 for 3. KKR lost wickets at regular intervals despite having a great start scoring 28 with no wickets down. They totaled 139 for 4 wickets by the end of the 16^th over. However, Andre Russel pulled a quick 48 off 13 balls awarding Mohammad Siraj 23 runs in a single over.

RCB bounced back in the next match with skipper Virat Kohli’s 5^th century scoring 100 runs in just 58 deliveries. RCB reached a total of 213 runs with Moen Ali scoring 66 off 28. Russel scored 65 off 25 for KKR and Nitish Rana scored 85 off 46. However, RCB won the match eventually by 10 runs with Virat Kohli being Man of the Match.

Kolkata Knight Riders – IPL Squad 2022

Kolkata Knight Riders – IPL title-winning seasons

Kolkata Knight Riders have two Indian Premier League titles under their name during the stint of Gautam Gambhir. In 2012, Kolkata Knight Riders defeated the defending champions, Chennai Super Kings at their home ground, M.A Chidambaram Stadium, denying their back-to-back title win for the third time.

Later in 2014, KKR went on to defeat Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Super Kings) by three wickets during the 200 runs chase. KKR has never lost an IPL final as they have won all of the finals they have appeared in, therefore they have a 100 percent win record in the finals.

Total results summary of Kolkata Knight Riders