IPL Final 2024: What are Kolkata Knight Riders' biggest strengths and weaknesses?

Just one match is all that’s left in the 17th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), with Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) squaring off against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the final at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium on Sunday.

KKR have been in a league of their own in IPL 2024. Not only did the Shreyas Iyer-led side top the points table with 20 points, they also managed to secure direct entry into the final with a clinical victory over SRH in Qualifier 1 in Ahmedabad. And heading into Sunday’s summit clash, the Knight Riders appear solid favourites for a third IPL title.

IPL final, KKR vs SRH: Schedule, time, venue, live telecast and streaming details

SRH had managed to secure a second-place finish on the final day of the league stage after their victory over Punjab Kings and KKR’s away clash against Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Guwahati.

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As a result, Pat Cummins and Co got two shots at reaching the final, and despite getting routed by Kolkata at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, they managed to bounce back right away with a 36-run victory over RR in Qualifier 2 in Chennai on Friday.

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KKR have won both of their fixtures against SRH this season in contrasting fashion; they had narrowly avoided a defeat in their opening game of the season at the Eden Gardens and were a class apart in Ahmedabad on Tuesday. The Sunrisers, will be hoping to make it 2-1 at the end of the season and help Australian Test and ODI skipper Cummins lift yet another trophy as a result.

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Ahead of the summit clash, we take a look at some of KKR’s strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

The two Iyers in the middle order

The two Iyers had starred in KKR’s eight-wicket thrashing of SRH, stitching an unbroken 97-run stand for the third wicket while bringing up their half-centuries. Venkatesh has been a match-winner for the Knight Riders on multiple occasions this season, coming to their rescue in both league matches against Mumbai Indians after they were off to shaky starts in both games.

Shreyas, on the other hand, had been struggling with his strike rate even if he had been making steady contributions. On Tuesday however, he led from the front with an unbeaten 58 off just 24 deliveries, striking at 241.67 and overshadowing his fellow Iyer for a change.

Two in-form spin twins

Qualifier 2 had witnessed two spinners — Shahbaz Ahmed and Abhishek Sharma — turn the game on its head after Hyderabad had posted what initially appeared to be a sub-par total of 175/9 at Chepauk. The two would share five of the seven Rajasthan wickets that fell on Friday while bowling their team to victory.

If spin is to play a crucial factor in the final, which normally is the case in Chennai, then few teams have aced that style of bowling better this season than the Knight Riders — with leg-spinner Varun Chakravarthy and senior offie Sunil Narine having collected a combined 36 wickets in IPL 2024, the former currently occupying the third spot on the leading wicket-takers’ list. Narine’s handy skills with the bat come as an added advantage for the Knight Riders.

Starc’s return to form

One of the biggest positives for KKR in the second half of the season has been the gradual return to form of their record signing Mitchell Starc. The Australian left-arm pacer had been patchy in the first half of IPL 2024; while he had collected 3/28 against Lucknow Super Giants in Kolkata on 14 April, he was largely wayward and proved expensive.

Starc sets the tone for Qualifier 1 with a ripper! 🔥#IPLonJioCinema #TATAIPL #KKRvSRH #TATAIPLPlayoffs #IPLinBengali pic.twitter.com/3AJG5BvZwT

— JioHotstar Reality (@HotstarReality) May 21, 2024

The franchise, however, continued to back him even when he was at his lowest, even after he went for 50-plus runs in consecutive games, against Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru respectively. It was his haul of 4/33 against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium that marked the beginning of a revival. Starc would later play a crucial role in KKR’s victory over SRH in Qualifier 1 with a three-wicket burst in the powerplay, with the left-arm pacer getting his Australian teammate Travis Head clean bowled for a two-ball duck .

Weaknesses

Rinku Singh

Shreyas’ low strike rate had been a big concern heading into the business end of the tournament, but he managed to quell doubts over his place in the T20 format with an explosive match-winning knock on Tuesday. The same, however, cannot be said of Rinku, who had been in red-hot form last year but hasn’t been able to replicate that in IPL 2024.

The Uttar Pradesh batter, who missed out on a place in India’s T20 World Cup squad, has collected just 168 runs at an average and strike rate of 18.67 and 148.67 respectively, and therefore, has been something of a weak link in a middle order that also comprises the explosive Andre Russell, who usually walks in after Rinku. He is due a big knock this season and will be hoping to end his lean patch in the final come Sunday.

Lack of experience in pace department

Both Vaibhav Arora and Harshit Rana have been impressive in the 17th IPL season, the latter especially so as a death over and currently finding himself at the 10th spot in the wicket-takers’ list with 17 scalps. The two thus nicely complement Starc as well as the two in-form spinners which, along with all-rounder Andre Russell’s handy seam-bowling skills, makes for a formidable attack.

However, both Arora and Rana are relatively inexperienced and aren’t quite used to the IPL playoffs. The two made their debut in 2022, with Arora having been part of Punjab Kings that year, and are yet to play a knockout game in the traditional sense. Qualifier 1, in which they had collected a wicket each, isn’t really a knockout if the losing team gets another shot at making the final.

Compare that with SRH, who have a lot more experience in their ranks when it comes to the frontline pace department with the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan besides skipper Cummins, all of whom are better equipped to handle the pressure of bowling in the big matches, especially the death overs of a knockout game.