With the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 underway in the Indian subcontinent, the three-time champions, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had a forgettable start as they went down against Mumbai Indians (MI) by 6 wickets on March 29. While the Ajinkya Rahane-led side will look to get to winning ways from their very next game, they are likely to get a big boost in Matheesha Pathirana.
The purple and gold franchise bought the Sri Lankan pacer at the mini-auction for INR 18 Crore, but an injury ruled him out for a few matches. However, his return still remains unclear; reports have revealed that he could join the side by mid-April as he is yet to get clearance from the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC). Notably, Pathirana suffered an injury during ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026.
We want Pathirana to be here: Shane Watson
Addressing the pre-match presser ahead of KKR’s game against MI, assistant coach Shane Watson said, “With Pathirana, obviously, it’s a waiting game at the moment. And we’re being guided by the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC). And we are just doing everything we can to get him over here as soon as possible. Because of the calibre of support, the support staff, and the medical staff that we’ve got here at KKR. We’ve got the same interests as SLC as well. We want Pathirana to be here. We want him to be fit. We certainly would never push him any earlier than he needs to.”
The former Australian cricketer further added, “The last thing that we want as KKR is him playing the first game and trying to come back too early and breaking as well. So we just hope that sooner rather than later, he’s able to come over here and we can really start the integration process.”
Without Pathirana, KKR’s bowling looked toothless. The 3-time champions would love for Pathirana to come back soon. However, there’s no way he will be available to play KKR’s next game on April 2 (against SRH) at Eden Gardens.
KKR IPL 2026 squad
Batters: Ajinkya Rahane (Captain), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Manish Pandey, Cameron Green, Finn Allen, Tejasvi Singh, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert, Rovman Powell
All-rounders: Anukul Roy, Sarthak Ranjan, Daksh Kamra, Rachin Ravindra, Ramandeep Singh
Bowlers: Blessing Muzarabani, Vaibhav Arora, Matheesha Pathirana, Kartik Tyagi, Prashant Solanki, Saurabh Dubey, Navdeep Saini, Umran Malik, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy
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