Nitish Rana will lead the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Indian Premier League 2023 in the absence of Shreyas Iyer, who is currently sidelined due to injury. The announcement came with just three days left until the start of the tournament.
Iyer is suffering from a back injury at the moment and is expected to miss at least the first half of the Indian Premier League 2023. He may miss more than that.
With a 6–8 record in IPL 2022, KKR ranked seventh:
Iyer’s injury had been known to KKR for some time; he didn’t bat in the Ahmedabad Test despite being in the starting XI, and he also missed the ODI series against Australia, so the announcement comes very close to the start of the IPL 2023.
Since learning of Iyer’s injury, KKR has been considering how to proceed in the event that Iyer is forced to miss some or all of the tournament. Sunil Narine, a member of KKR for nearly a decade, was a candidate for captain alongside Nitish Rana.
Here are the three main factors that led to KKR appointing Nitish Rana as interim captain:
In most cases, selecting an Indian captain is preferable to selecting an international player:
Having a foreign captain has backfired on more than one IPL team in recent history. Midway through the 2021 season, even the great David Warner was let go after he and his SRH team had been struggling.
That’s why it makes sense that KKR’s upper management favored Rana over Narine and Russell. KKR would prefer that Narine and Russell not take on the extra responsibility and weight of captaincy, so that they can instead concentrate solely on their games and their fitness.
One might also assume that, as an Indian captain, Rana would have better communication skills than Narine, who is well-known for speaking very little.
While Narine underwhelmed as ADKR’s captain in ILT20, Nitish Rana has a strong track record as a domestic cricket captain:
According to the report, Nitish Rana had been in the running for the captaincy in the minds of the KKR management and decision-makers. His competitor was Sunil Narine, who had recently led Abu Dhabi Knight Riders in the inaugural ILT20 in the United Arab Emirates, where they finished last out of six teams with only one win and eight losses.
In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Cup, Nitish Rana has guided his state side, Delhi, to a record of 8 victories and 4 losses over the course of 12 Twenty20 matches. Since the 29-year-old player has been with KKR since 2018, the organization has significant familiarity with him.
Batsman over injury-prone bowler and all-rounder in Narine and Russell: Rana gets the nod over Russell and Narine.
The KKR already have one injured captain to deal with, and his name is Shreyas. They would prefer for their interim captain to participate in all of the games.
Nitish Rana does not have a history of injuries like Narine and Russell do, who both missed IPL matches owing to injuries and niggles, but Nitish Rana did not miss any matches due to his own injuries.
Kolkata Knight Riders Final Squad:
Nitish Rana (C), Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Lockie Ferguson, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Anukul Roy, Rinku Singh, Narayan Jagadeesan, Vaibhav Arora, Suyash Sharma, David Weise, Kulwant Khejrolia, Mandeep Singh, Litton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Shreyas Iyer (subject to fitness)
