Apart from his 95 in the Ranji Trophy final for Mumbai against Vidarbha recently, it’s been a while that KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer strung a few high scores consistently. He flopped in the Test series against South Africa, then against England. He complained of back issues, and was soon ousted from the BCCI central contracts list as well.
Despite the NCA doctors giving him a clean chit, he continued to miss matches. But all that is a thing of the past, since now it’s IPL 2024 time. He is leading KKR, and there’s a lots at stake for the team, as well as him. After all, he is the most experienced skipper now in the IPL, after MS Dhoni relinquished captaincy, and Rohit Sharma was relieved of the duties by MI.
Yes, you heard it right. Iyer, out of the current roster, is the man with most matches as a captain in the IPL — 55 outings. The next on the list is KL Rahul with 51 matches as a leader. But what’s bit of a concern for Iyer is that he’s won only 27 and lost 26 out of those. That’s not where he’d ideally want to be, especially given their struggles in the last two years, where they did not make the playoffs.
KKR Need Iyer the Batsman
After missing the entire IPL 2023 after a back surgery, team would be looking at captain Iyer, to perform with the bat. Although, in 2022 he had a decent season, scoring 401 runs in 14 matches, at an average of 30, but perhaps he would need a lot more. That, not for the team alone, but to undo the poor run of form.
Come the KKR vs SRH match, it is where it all starts again for Iyer, while the opposition would most likely follow the usual script, pepper him with short balls.
Editors pick
