Kolkata Knight Riders’ campaign is as good as over, if truth be told.
On Friday night against Gujarat Titans, Ajinkya Rahane’s men lost their fifth match of the 2026 Indian Premier League (IPL), and from here it will take a major miracle for them to qualify for the play-offs. No two ways about it.
There were two occasions against Gujarat Titans at the Narendera Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad that gave away that Shah Rukh Khan’s franchise had thrown in the towel, to all intents and purposes. That there was no will to do well anymore.
The first one happened in the 17th over. Ramandeep Singh fell to tearaway pacer Ashok Sharma after playing one shot too many, and in came West Indian allrounder Sunil Narine. At the other end was Aussie import Cameron Green, who had finally delivered the goods and was looking good to score his first hundred for the Kolkata-based franchise. He had scored 75 off 45 balls and appeared all set to up the ante in the remaining overs.
You would guess, at the bidding of your common sense, that Narine would take a single and bring Green back to the striker’s end, but that wasn’t what happened. What he did off the three remaining deliveries in the over was simply inexplicable. He kind of took a swipe at all of them and didn’t connect even once.
Two short balls and a yorker, and there was no attempt from Narine to bring some kind of calmness to the KKR camp. His body language suggested he had no plan to hang in there. That he had come into bat without any directions from the dugout.
Then, in the next over, bowled by Mohammed Siraj, Green showed he wasn’t thinking straight either. Off the first ball, he took a single! Having seen how Narine looked clueless in the previous over, he should have tried to play at least five balls in that over and score as many runs as possible.
It was clear he was not thinking about his team. His failure with the bat in the five previous matches was what he was thinking about, and he was out there to set things to rights from his own point of view. Team interest was far back in his mind!
Anyway, Narine was back on the strike, and his horror show continued. He played one more dot before Siraj finally put an end to his misery: had him caught by Glenn Phillips close to deep backward point.
Total chaos!
Shortly after Kartik Tyagi also got run out, a sign that the team was totally in the doldrums. Green, who at one point looked good to score a ton, also lost the plot from 18th over onwards, and was finally removed by Rashid Khan off the last delivery of the innings for 79 off 55 balls.
A score of 180 on a placid Ahmedabad track was never going to test Gujarat Titans, as it eventually turned out.
If KKR’s top management ever decides to investigate what went wrong for their team, they need look no further than those three dots played by Narine and that single taken by Green off the very first ball of the next over. Everything will be clear as day!
