A team that truly proved to be the underdogs this season. Starting the UAE leg at 7th place, KKR dominated teams to reach the playoffs. Amongst the 4 teams in the playoffs, KKR received the least votes in fan polls to reach the final. With the motivation to prove everyone wrong, the purple knights fought their way against the likes of Royal Challengers Bangalore and the amazing bowling line up of Delhi Capitals to meet the Chennai Super Kings in the finals.
The rise was such a remarkable achievement that even the CSK captain, MS Dhoni commented on the squad after the match, “”Before I start talking about CSK, I feel it’s important that I talk about KKR, the position they were in, in the first half of IPL, it is very difficult from that position to come back and do what they have really done. If any team deserved to win this year’s IPL, I feel it was KKR. Big credit to the support staff and the players. It’s not really easy…whenever the team is not doing well, it’s a very difficult task. I think the break really helped them. But a tremendous performance.”
You know you’ve done something right when even if you lose you earn everyone’s respect for what you did. McCullum later commented on how the break worked out really well for the young talents like Gill and Rana.
“The break probably came at a really good time for us to be honest,It can be hard in a tournament such as the IPL to be able to keep your composure when results are going against you. Where we sat after seven games, with only two wins, it was pretty disappointing. So the break came at a good time. During that time, we had some conversations right throughout the few months in between with some guys, and just tried to smooth out a couple of rough edges.”
KKR might have lost but they proved why they are considered to be one of the top 3 teams in the IPL right next to the Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. Let’s see what happens next with the Mega Auction. Teams will be allowed to retain only 4 players with now ‘Right To Match’ cards available throughout the auction.