Nitish Rana will be the stand-in captain for Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2023. Shreyas Iyer will miss the start of the season because of a back injury. The left-handed batter will fill in for him.
Rana is a flashy left-handed batter who has been with the team since 2018. In each of the five seasons he has been there, he has scored more than 300 runs. The 29-year-old has led Delhi teams in the Indian domestic circuit, so he knows how to be a captain. He has also played for India in two Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) and one One-Day International (ODI). All three of these games took place in Sri Lanka in July 2021, when India was there on a tour.
Iyer’s back injury flared up again during the fourth Border-Gavaskar Test against Australia in Ahmedabad, so the two-time IPL champions had to choose a new captain. Longtime Knight Riders Andre Russell and Sunil Narine, as well as current New Zealand Test captain Tim Southee, were also in the running for the job.
The management, on the other hand, is still hoping that Iyer, whose services they bought last year for INR 12.25 crore, will play at some point this season. “While we hope Shreyas will get better and play at some point in the IPL 2023 season, we feel lucky that Nitish, who has led his state team in white-ball cricket and has been with KKR since 2018 and has IPL experience, will do a great job,” the franchise said in a press release.
“We are also sure that he will get all the help he needs off the field from Head Coach Chandrakant Pandit and the support staff. On the field, Nitish will get all the help he needs from the highly experienced leaders in the team. We hope he does well in his new job and that Shreyas gets better quickly.”
KKR’s quest for a third title starts on April 1 when they play the Punjab Kings away.
