Everything is going wrong for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) this season.
At the auction table, they built a side that had top-order firepower and variety in their bowling attack. By their first game of IPL 2026, they were left with Blessing Muzarabani and Umran Malik as their only capped fast bowlers.
On Tuesday, Cameron Green took over that mantle. He had bowled his full quota of four overs four times in 48 T20s. And it had been three years since a team had asked him to share new-ball duties. Choosing to bowl with an attack like that is, uhm, one way to go.
Chennai Super Kings showed no mercy, scoring 72 for 1 in the powerplay, after which the spinners got the ball to grip and scoring scored down. KKR would have known that this chase – 192 – was all about the powerplay. So they pushed Sunil Narine up the order, which, whether it worked or not, throws up questions. Ajinkya Rahane‘s best position is opening the batting. But if this is the situation that plays out when the team is in need of big runs in the first six overs, it paints their captain in less than ideal light.
As much as depth is good in T20 cricket, the top order might be the exception to the rule. Because when you have too many of those, it means one or more will always have to bat out of position. This is part of why Green’s output is 56 runs in five innings – he hasn’t batted in the same position two games in a row. Against CSK, he came out at No. 6. He’s batted there, and lower, in the IPL seven times and has a highest score of 17 not out. When he’s been in the top three, he’s hit back-to-back fifties and a hundred as well.
KKR have reason to feel aggrieved for sitting winless after five matches. They lost so much of their bowling firepower – Harshit Rana and Akash Deep to injuries and Mustafzur Rahman to non-cricketing reasons, and are yet to have Matheesha Pathirana in their squad – that even getting on the park feels like a pretty cool thing. CSK lost just one bowler – Nathan Ellis – and they were barely holding it together in their first three matches. But the choices KKR have made with their batting line-up, and even with the toss, just make it feel like they are complicating things further.
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IPL 2026 – CSK vs KKR – Finch: Time for KKR to bring Seifert in for Green
“You never pick a team on price tag,” Aaron Finch said
Ahead of the game, local boy R Ashwin was on the broadcast talking about the pitch and conditions. He said the predominantly red-soil make-up of the pitch would give the bowlers something to work with. There was other data that indicated this surface would lend itself to defending a total. When the coin came down in KKR’s favour, Rahane chose to do the exact opposite.
The toss is something cricketers don’t like giving weight to publicly. Part of the work they put in is to make sure they are able to overcome the disadvantage of losing them. Still, when it just so happens that they end up on the right side of it, as KKR have in three out of five games, they have not made it count.
Against Punjab Kings, in a game marred and eventually ruined by rain, they batted first when prevailing wisdom suggests chasing tends to be the better option. Against Sunrisers Hyderabad, they misjudged the conditions and found themselves chasing 227 on a pitch that was slowing down in the second innings. The same thing happened in Chennai, where they ended up with a middle order of Rahane (119.59), Rinku Singh (119.77) and Angkrish Raghuvanshi (135.26). IPL numbers since 2023 say all of them score slowly against spin. Noor Ahmad and Akeal Hosein exploited that and finished with combined figures of 8-0-47-4. Once again, KKR had made it easy for their opposition.
A combination of external factors and internal mis-steps has left this team firmly in Jim Carrey meme territory. Mumbai Indians showed you could win the IPL even after a horror run like this. So the IPL is saying there is a chance. Are KKR equipped to take it?
