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IPL 2021: Ajit Agarkar hopes Kolkata Knight Riders do better next season

Former India pacer Ajit Agarkar feels a team like Kolkata Knight Riders will need to play better next season as they have a lot of match-winners in their squad.

IPL 2021: Ajit Agarkar hopes Kolkata Knight Riders do better next season

Bengaluru, November 18: Former India pacer Ajit Agarkar feels a team like Kolkata Knight Riders will need to play better next season as they have a lot of match-winners in their squad.

KKR finished fifth in IPL 2020, having won just seven games for 14 points in as many games. The star peformers for them with the bat were Shubman Gill, who was the top-scorer with 440 runs followed by Eoin Morgan with 418 runs and Nitish Rana with 352 runs.

Most expensive overseas buy, Pat Cummins combined with the young Indian bowling talent to perform with the ball. However, West Indian T20 specialists like Andre Russell and Sunil Narine had a poor campaign both with bat and ball.

Agarkar said while Chennai Super Kings may need to rebuild, KKR are a side which don't need a lot of tinkering as the former India pacer feels they are too good a side to finish fifth.

"CSK certainly need a little bit of restructuring. But the one team I hope plays better or plays a bit more consistently, is KKR," Agarkar said on Star Sports show 'Cricket Connected'.

Despite having a star-studded squad including the likes of Russell, Morgan, Dinesh Karthik, Narine and Cummins, KKR failed to qualify for the play-off last season.

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Karthik also stepped down from the captaincy midway through the season to 'focus on his batting' after experiencing a poor run with the bat. So, Agarkar, who has played for KKR in the past, believes that there were things not right within KKR camp which affected their season.

"I think KKR certainly has a lot of match-winners in them or T20 specialists if you like. They should be doing a lot better. There were in better positions, changed the captain for some reason midway through and you could see that there was something not right in the camp."

Agarkar also feels the Kolkata-based franchise has the potential to do better if they stick to their players and trust the leader irrespective of the results.

"I think it has happened before as well and somehow, they scraped through to the playoffs. They have got far too good a team to be as inconsistent, T20 format is very difficult to be consistent, but they have got far too good a team to be that.

"So, I hope they get those things right. And especially, get the leadership, whoever it is and stick to it during the course of the season."

(With Agency inputs)

Story first published: Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 15:25 [IST]
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