Defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders have lost two of their three games in the ongoing IPL 2025. The Ajinkya Rahane-led side lost their opening game against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, followed by a win against Rajasthan Royals and then a humiliating eight-wicket defeat to Mumbai Indians. There are several areas that the team management needs to address at the moment or else the season can run out of their hands sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, after the defeat to Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium, all-rounder Ramandeep Singh blamed the mega-auction for breaking KKR’s winning momentum. Under the leadership of Shreyas Iyer, the three-time champions played some phenomenal cricket in 2024 but the team eventually failed to retain some of the key performers such as the captain himself, Mitchell Starc, Nitish Rana and Phil Salt due to the mega-auction dynamics.
Interestingly, all these players have been sensational this season and their absence have hurt KKR. Reflecting upon that, Ramandeep stated that it is ‘disheartening’ but they are working to find the winning combination.
“Mega auctions are disheartening. You set a combination, and then every three years you have to change the team. But that is not an excuse; teams will try and find their winning combinations as quickly as possible, and we are trying to find our winning combination as well,” Ramandeep said after the match on Monday.
Speaking on the defeat to Mumbai, captain Rahane highlighted the batting failure and added that the team needs to learn fast from the last game and improve quickly.
“Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket to bat on, as I mentioned in the toss. 180-190 would have been good on this wicket. It has a very good bounce. Sometimes you have to use the pace and bounce. We got to learn really fast from this game,” Rahane said after the match.
© 2009-2025 Independent News Service. All rights reserved.
