The Making of a Winning Team

EVEN THOUGH IT was the shortest final in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL), it still per­haps took awfully long to finish given that the end was nigh from the very first over of the match. For, once Kolkata Knight Riders’ Mitchell Starc struck with the fifth ball of the night (a delivery that could well be considered for the moment of this long tournament, due to how it angled in and straightened off the pitch) and simultaneously lit up Abhishek Sharma’s off stump and all of Chepauk, the organis­ers could well have rolled out the presentation ceremony. Because this is what Starc does best: snuff out all hopes of the opposition on the biggest of stages before the contest can even truly begin with a critical first-over wicket, be it that of New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum in the final of the ODI World Cup in 2015 or that of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Travis Head in the first qualifier of this very tournament.

Head, possibly fearing a repeat, chose to be at the non-striker’s end for the final in Chennai, hoping that Abhishek stood a better chance of seeing Starc’s opening wrath through. He couldn’t and by the time Head—as big a big-match player as they come, with hundreds in the World Cup final as well as the World Test Championship final last year—was nicked out for a golden duck in the second over by Vaibhav Arora, a talent on the rise from Himachal Pradesh, KKR knew that they had an arm wrapped around their third IPL title. A short while later, the best team of this tournament had won their first trophy in exactly 10 years, ending a decade’s worth of irrelevance in the most commanding way possible, with almost half an innings to spare on the night (as they chased down the target of 114 runs in 10.3 overs) and with only three losses in a long and winding tournament.

And thus, the great turnaround, from bottom-half of the table in 2023 to the very top of the stack in 2024, had been completed.

While KKR’s bravery and aggressiveness on the field has been widely credited for their resounding success this season, their fabulous off-field strate­gies must receive their due as well. The team owned by Shah Rukh Khan got the ball rolling by bringing back Gautam Gambhir, who was of course captain of KKR when they won their previous two titles in 2012 and 2014, as men­tor. It made immediate impact, with Gambhir whispering into co-owner Venky Mysore’s ear at the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai, where the IPL auction for this season was held. Those whisperings ended with KKR pursuing and eventually buy­ing Starc for `24.75 crore, the most expensive signing of all time in this league.

That wasn’t all. Difficult decisions were taken too. The experienced hands of Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur, both struggling for form in the previous seasons, were shipped out while the think-tank decided to make Arora and young Harshit Rana frontline bowlers. Gambhir also ensured that off-spinner Sunil Narine reprised his role of an opening batsman, something the Trinidadian hadn’t since 2018, essentially right through coach McCullum’s tenure. To give Narine company at the top of the order, KKR hired the services of the hard-hitting wicketkeeper, Phil Salt. This meant that regular opener Venkatesh Iyer would assume the No 3 role, just above the other Iyer, captain Shreyas, followed by Nitish Rana and the power-hitters in Andre Russell and Rinku Singh.

The foundations had been laid, but would it hold the weight and gruel of a season? Despite many a setback, it would. In KKR’s campaign opener, also against Pat Cummins’ SRH, Narine was out for a score of just 2 runs and his cheap dismissal had a cascading ef­fect on the rest of the top order, what with Venkatesh, Shreyas and Rana getting out for 7, 0 and 9, respective­ly. But the big-hitting Russell bailed them out with seven sixes in his 25- ball 64 and eked them past 200; 208, to be precise. But with all eyes on the biggest buy yet, Starc conceded 54 runs from his four overs without taking a wicket. And yet, KKR won by four runs.

For Starc and KKR, the pattern repeated itself in the fol­lowing match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. The Australian quick gave away 47 runs from his quota of overs, yet again going wicketless, while the team from Kolkata won anyway. This time it was thanks to Narine finding his voice as an opening batsman, with five sixes and a couple of fours in his stroke-filled 47 as KKR hunted down RCB’s target of 183 with a handful of overs to spare. Narine simply never dropped form again, banging out a 39-ball 85 in the next game against Delhi Capitals to help KKR post a jaw-dropping score of 272 runs. They of course won. What more, even Starc was among the wickets. Just when the fans were beginning to question if he was worth his price, having conceded 101 runs in eight wicket­less overs thus far, Starc dismissed his Australian mates, DC’s David Warner and Mitchell Marsh, and he too was on his way.

The three-match winning streak ended against the Chennai Super Kings, but KKR regained their composure quickly. Even in future defeats, such as the high-scoring one to Rajasthan Royals, KKR found plenty of positives: such as Narine’s maiden hundred and his two leg-before wickets dur­ing the chase. Now, they were a well-oiled machine, beating teams for fun and also beating teams when they had no reason to beat them, such as when they got the better of RCB by 1 run, the closest match of this tournament. But what wasn’t ever close was KKR’s march into the IPL play-offs, getting there well before any other team and with so many points to spare that when their last two group games were washed out without a ball being bowled, it didn’t make a difference to their qualification.

What really puts KKR’s 2024 dominance in perspective is to look at them from the lens of SRH, easily the second-best team in the business, both in terms of position on the table at the end of the group stages and form. Yet, KKR crushed them by eight wickets in the qualifier to get to the final, and then by the same margin once again in the final, to make it three wins against the next-best in the space of one season. This was because of the quality of their bowling in a season defined by high scores, with off-spinner Varun Chakravarthy finishing with 21 wickets, Harshit and Russell with 19 each and Narine and Starc with 17-a-piece. That’s five bowlers from KKR in the top-15 wicket-takers this season, with no other team having more than two representatives on the same list.

ChennaiIPL 2024IPL trophyKolkata Knight RidersShah Rukh KhanVaibhav AroraVenkatesh Iyer