Auction Preview for Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2016

Kolkata Knight Riders:

Total Players: 15

Auction Purse: Rs. 17,95,00,000

Two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders missed out on the play-offs last season by a solitary point. This year, the would be hoping to win the IPL again with a strong line-up. KKR are one of the few sides that have kept their core set of players from the last season. Their batting line-up looks enviable with Robin Uthappa, Chris Lynn, Manish Pandey and Andre Russell, Shakib all in top form while Yusuf Pathan and Gautam Gambhir will be looking to get amongst the runs.

Last season Sunil Narine with a remodelled action didn’t prove to be as effective as KKR would’ve liked and hence there was much more pressure on other bowlers in the squad to pick wickets. Shakib al Hasan and Andre Russell do lend them the extra advantage in the middle overs, but the worrying form of Umesh Yadav, who has been left out of the T20 squad against Sri Lanka, would prompt them to pick a few pace bowlers to back Umesh Yadav in case he misfires.

Morne Morkel will be the leader of the bowling attack, but as it has happened over the years, the “only 4 foreign players in the side” might keep him on the bench more often than he’d have liked considering Lynn, Shakib and Russell’s red hot form and the mystery of Narine who has yet again remodelled his action.

The strategy for KKR will be to pick a more reliable pacer than Umesh Yadav who will pick wickets at the top of the order and give them the edge in the middle overs where Narine, Shakib and Piyush Chawla can go on to strangle the opponent much to his captain’s liking on the slow Eden Gardens wickets. The best they can go for is Ashish Nehra or Mohit Sharma who performed pretty well for CSK last season. On the batting front, they can look to get one good foreign batsman as a back-up for their explosive middle order.

Most Likely Picks: Ashish Nehra, Mohit Sharma, Dale Steyn, Stuart Binny, Mitchell Marsh