Former India pacer Ajit Agarkar hopes that Kolkata Knight Riders will play better next season as they have a lot of match-winners in their squad.
KKR finished fifth in the tournament with 14 points in as many games. Despite having a star-studded squad including Andre Russell, Eoin Morgan, Dinesh Karthik, Sunil Narine, and Pat Cummins side failed to qualify for the play-off. According to Agarkar, the Kolkata-based side has the potential to finish better if they stick to their players and trust the leader irrespective of the results.
In the 13th edition of the IPL, Dinesh Karthik stepped down from the captaincy midway and handed over to Eoin Morgan to ‘focus on his batting’ after experiencing a poor run with the bat.
Shubman Gill was the top-scorer for the side as the opening batsman accumulated 440 runs including three half-centuries. Morgan was the second-highest run-getter for KKR as he scored 418 runs followed by Nitish Rana’s 352.
Speaking on Star Sports show ‘Cricket Connected’ Agarkar said, “I think there are a couple of teams, CSK certainly need a little bit of restructuring. But the one team I hope plays better or plays a bit more consistently, is KKR. I think KKR certainly has a lot of match-winners in them or T20 specialists if you like. They should be doing a lot better. There were in better positions, changed the captain for some reason midway through and you could see that there was something not right in the camp.”
“I think it has happened before as well and somehow, they scraped through to the playoffs. They have got far too good a team to be as inconsistent, T20 format is very difficult to be consistent, but they have got far too good a team to be that. So, I hope they get those things right. And especially, get the leadership, whoever it is, and stick to it during the course of the season,” he added.
