Kolkata Team’s Performance in TATA IPL 2024
15
Matches
11
Won
3
Lost
73.33
Win %
Expected Playing XI
Phil Salt(wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer ©, Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Mitchell Starc, Chetan Sakariya, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana
Key players to watch out for
Mitchell Starc – The left-arm pacer had a good tournament in the World Cup and is making a return to the league after a long time. He had earlier pulled out of the team in 2018 after suffering an injury on the South Africa tour a few weeks before the start of the season. The price tag won’t be a pressure on the veteran who has won almost everything imaginable in the last 12 months with Australia.
Shreyas Iyer – The captain of the team will be playing for the first time in front of the Eden Gardens crowds. However, Iyer has had a topsy-turvy last few months, having starred in the team’s World Cup campaign before being dropped from the central contract list. So, the right-hander will be under a lot of pressure coming into TATA IPL 2024.
Rinku Singh – After his 5 sixes in an over performance against Gujarat last season, Rinku Singh’s stocks have only grown as a batter and luckily for the franchise, Singh has shown he has more to his batting than slogging. However, it will be interesting how the youngster handles the pressure of expectations in TATA IPL 2024.
Kolkata’s Schedule for TATA IPL 2024
Squad Analysis of Kolkata
Kolkata have now gone 9 years without a trophy and barring their 2021 performance, the team, once considered a powerhouse, has slid down in the pecking order in general. Gautam Gambhir’s return is expected to fire the team up. Jason Roy’s exit has opened the door for swashbuckling opener Phil Salt. The pace attack has been strengthened with the purchase of Mitchell Starc. The spin attack hardly ever needed tinkering.
Strengths – The team’s middle order looks fairly powerful with the likes of Rana, Rinku and Russell manning it. The spin trio of Sunil Narine, Varun Chakraborty and Suyash Sharma will be effective on their home grounds.
Weaknesses – The top order doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence and was a major reason for the team’s dismal performance in the last edition. While batters like Gurbaz, Venkatesh, Salt and Shreyas have played some incredible knocks, they are yet to carry the team’s batting on their shoulders throughout the season.
Kolkata Team in TATA IPL 2024
After having made a miraculous comeback to reach the final of the tournament in 2021, things haven’t gone too well for the Kolkata franchise in the subsequent editions. The team appointed a new skipper in Shreyas Iyer but finished 7th in 2022. Iyer unfortunately got injured just ahead of the 2023 season, leading to Nitish Rana having to captain the team. There were several moments of magic from some of the players in the season but as a whole, the team failed to put up a performance that could take them to the playoffs. In 2024, Shreyas returns to the team as the captain and also making a comeback is Gautam Gambhir as the mentor. Gambhir was the skipper who had led Kolkata to two titles in 2012 and 2014 and also recently took Lucknow to two successive playoffs. The coach, of course, remains the domestic cricket giant, Chandrakant Pandit who will feel the pressure of delivering the results in TATA IPL 2024 after the team’s not so impressive showing in the last two editions of the tournament.
The team made the biggest buy of the league at the auction table by shelling out 24.5 crore to avail the services of Australian superstar Mitchell Starc to strengthen their pace attack. Only time will tell, though, how will this record-breaking purchase be viewed by the world by the end of the TATA IPL 2024.
Kolkata’s stats in Indian T20 League
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- While their last trophy came in 2014, Kolkata remains the only team apart from Mumbai and Chennai to have multiple Indian T20 League trophies.
- The team made it to the finals of the league on three occasions – 2012, 2014 and 2021. While they managed to win it on the first two occasions, they lost to Chennai in 2021, the same team they had defeated in 2012 to win their first trophy.
- The first centurion of the tournament was a Kolkata player as Brendon McCullum struck 158* in the team’s first ever encounter in the league against Bangalore. Surprisingly, it took another 15 years for another Kolkata batter to score a century when Venkatesh Iyer scored a ton against Mumbai in 2023.
- Sunil Narine and Andre Russell have emerged as the most valuable player of the tournament twice, a feat that no other player has achieved in the tournament’s history. Sunil Narine emerged as the tournament’s MVP in 2012 and 2018 and Andre Russell got the honours in 2015 and 2019.
- Andre Russell hit a record 51 sixes in the 2019 season of Indian T20 League. In the league’s history, that’s only second best to Chris Gayle’s 59 sixes for Bangalore in 2012 season.
- Kolkata also holds the record of skittling out the opposition for the lowest total in the league’s history. They bundled Bangalore out for a mere 49 in the 2017 season.
