On November 22, 2023, when Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore announced that Gautam Gambhir was coming back to KKR (this time as a mentor), fans of the purple and gold brigade saw this as an omen of good things to come for a team which had finished seventh on the points table in the last two seasons (2022 and 2023).
It’s true that a season before that (2021), KKR had finished runners-up, losing to the Chennai Super Kings in the summit clash by 27 runs, after finishing fourth on the points table after the league stage. However, what KKR fans were really waiting to see on the field was the killer attitude shown by the team in the seasons when they won the coveted trophy (2012 and 2014). 2021 was a good season for KKR overall, under then captain Eoin Morgan, but they were nowhere close to being the shark that the rest of the pool wanted to steer clear of.
There’s no doubt that Gambhir is the one name that became synonymous with KKR’s glory days. In 2011, when Gambhir took over as KKR captain, he stepped into the shoes of arguably the most loved and adored cricketer in Bengal - the prince of Kolkata - Sourav Ganguly. Here was a cricketer from Delhi, who promised the die-hard legions of KKR fans, and largely people of Bengal, that his personal motto would from that day on also be - ‘korbo, lorbo, jeetbo’. Many had predicted a backlash. Instead, Gauti became an honorary Bangali. From seasons 2011 to 2017, while Gambhir was with the team, KKR won their first title in 2012 and then produced an encore in 2014, qualified for the play-offs as many as five times and also reached one final of the now-defunct Champions League T20 (2014).
Read: How Shreyas Iyer-led KKR ended a decade-long wait for third title
It’s no big surprise that GG was welcomed back to the KKR fold, with arms wide open.
There’s one KKR fan who has collected Rs 10 currency notes since 2018, whose serial numbers are the same as the dates of some of the biggest milestones in Gambhir’s India and KKR career. KKR fans have been some of the most loyal in the history of the league and Gambhir is and always will be one of their favourites. The 2024 title win has strengthened that bond manifold. Footage of Shah Rukh Khan giving Gambhir a long kiss on the forehead after the final was indication enough of what he means to the franchise.
king @iamsrk gives Gautam Gambhir a forehead kiss. pic.twitter.com/Y133fHgnHH
— Nidhi (@SrkianNidhiii) May 26, 2024
It’s no secret that Gambhir, who played a key role in India winning both the 2007 T20 World Cup final and the 2011 ODI World Cup final, doesn’t really show his emotions. But Kolkata clearly tugs at his heartstrings. As a mentor, he played a big role at the Lucknow Super Giants team. The Lucknow franchise got on the IPL bandwagon in 2022 and finished third on the points table after the league stage in their first two seasons. But when (according to multiple news reports) KKR co-owner Shah Rukh Khan spoke to Gambhir to try and convince him to join KKR as a mentor, Gambhir saw a chance to go back to a franchise he’s always had a special place in his heart for.
Gambhir’s statement after he was announced as the new KKR mentor summed it up nicely - “I am not an emotional person and not many things move me. But this is different. This is back to where it all started. Today, there is a lump in my throat and fire in my heart as I think about slipping into that purple and gold jersey once again. I am not only coming back to KKR but I am coming back to the city of joy. I am back. I am hungry. I am number 23. Ami KKR”.
But Gambhir is no wizard. He doesn’t have a magic potion that can transform a team that hadn’t won the title in a decade into an overnight consistent performer. And he wasn’t coming in as head coach mind you. That post is held by Chandrakant Pandit, a former India cricketer who is respected across the Indian cricketing fraternity for his coaching success with state teams like Vidarbha, who he took to consecutive Ranji Trophy titles in 2018 and 2019, and Madhya Pradesh, who won their maiden Ranji title in 2022 with Pandit as a coach.
Most premier athletes might deny it, but it’s not easy to leave your ego at the door. Gambhir had to find a way to establish an amiable working relationship with Pandit, who is also many years his senior and is known to be a strict disciplinarian. If TV footage of the two ‘coaches’ sitting next to each other in the dugout, having long conversations and occasionally sharing a laugh is anything to go by, that mission has clearly been a successful one.
π½οΈ π₯ππͺ π₯ππππ§ππ’π‘π¦
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 26, 2024
Moments of pure joy, happiness, jubilation, and happy tears π₯Ή
What it feels to win the #TATAIPL Final π
Scorecard βΆοΈ https://t.co/lCK6AJCdH9#KKRvSRH | #Final | #TheFinalCall | @KKRiders pic.twitter.com/987TCaksZz
KKR had to make certain changes after two disastrous seasons (2022 and 2023). And that must have been one of the mandates given to Gambhir when he was brought in as a mentor.
In a statement released by KKR after they brought Gambhir back on board, Shah Rukh Khan said - “Gautam has always been part of the family and this is our Captain coming back home in a different avatar as a “Mentor”. He was sorely missed and now we all look forward to Chandu Sir and Gautam in instilling the never-say-die spirit and of sportsmanship, they stand for, in creating magic with Team KKR”.
Our Captain.
The first big move that made headlines was buying Australian left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc at the pre-season auction for a sum of money never bid for any cricketer at an IPL auction - Rs 24.75 crore. This decision of course raised many eyebrows. Here was a cricketer who had not played in the IPL since 2015 and is also no spring chicken. And till Qualifier 1 of this season had taken 12 wickets in 12 games. He was yet to fully justify his huge price tag of course, but his figures of 3/34 in Qualifier 1 vs the Sunrisers Hyderabad was an indication that the big-match player in Starc is still well and truly alive. His Man of the Match winning performance didn’t just take KKR to their fourth IPL final, it also mended what was perhaps the only chink in their armour - A tearaway fast bowler hitting prime form. And Mitch carried that spark into the final as well. His delivery to remove the hard-hitting Abhishek Sharma in the summit clash was not just a peach of a delivery, it was hands down a huge contender for ball of the season. Figures of 2/14 and two catches were enough to see him walk away with the Player of the Match award in the final as well.
Starc doing what he does best when it really matters solved another big problem for the franchise. One of the things that was not working for KKR in the last two seasons was impactful foreign player contribution.
Sunil Narine, arguably KKR’s most cherished foreign player, took 9 wickets in 2022 and 11 in 2023 (14 matches in both seasons.) This season, Narine has finished with 17 wickets.
IPL Final |Β βWe were completely outplayed,β SRH skipper Pat Cummins
With the bat, he had tallies of 71 and 21 runs in 14 matches in seasons 2022 and 2023. Most KKR fans had almost forgotten that Narine can be a destructive batter up top.
In 2017, which was Gambhir’s last season as a player and captain with KKR, he pushed Narine up as an opener. The move was first tried out by the Melbourne Renegades in the 2016-17 Big Bash League. Though the BBL ’experiment’ lasted for just three matches that season, Gambhir and KKR had seen enough to try out Narine the opener in the IPL as well.
Fast forward seven seasons and in IPL 2024 Narine was back as a regular opener for KKR and given carte blanch by Gambhir to play his own unique brand of slam-bang cricket. Narine finished the season as KKR’s leading run-getter with 488 runs, including a maiden T20 century to go with three fifties. The starts that his brand of see the ball, hit the ball gave the team were crucial and more importantly it gave KKR the freedom to play an extra batter.
Gambhir’s hand behind the decision was obvious and Narine confirmed it when he said - “With GG coming back, he gave me the confidence and the assurance that I’ll open the batting. And out of the 14 games, just try to [succeed] in three or four to give the team a good start.”
In Gambhir’s own words, his relationship with Narine is one that is built on trust. During a recent fan interaction with die-hard KKR fans, Gambhir said - “When I came back (to KKR) this year, the only thing I told him was that I am coming back home and he needs to welcome me the way I welcomed him (to KKR) in 2012β¦.And 2012 was my most successful season as a batterβ¦.Most importantly, I share a very, very close bond with him, He’s a very shy guy, in fact I am a very shy boy as well, but we open up with each other and talk a lot about cricket. Having him for such a long time and what he has done for KKR has been phenomenal.”
Not surprisingly, Narine was named the Most Valuable Player for IPL 2024.
Read: IPL 2024 final awards and prize money
Narine was also given a consistent opening partner in Phil Salt, who incredibly went unsold at the auction and was drafted in when Jason Roy pulled out. The two opened for KKR in their first 12 matches and established hands-down one of the two most feared opening combinations of IPL 2024 (along with Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma of SRH). The Narine-Salt combine was one of the main reasons for KKR’s good run. With these two at the crease, they managed to capitalise on the powerplay overs big time. That partnership was altered only when Salt had to go back home for England’s T20 World Cup preparations and Afghanistan’s Rahmanullah Gurbaz replaced the Englishman as both keeper and Narine’s opening partner.
In 2022 and 2023, KKR had as many as seven different openers.
This was one example of the stability that KKR has shown this season in terms of personnel, something that champion teams always have - just ask CSK or MI.
With the mega auction scheduled for next year, KKR will try to hold onto as many core team members as possible. Incredibly, they lost just three matches all season - that’s the joint fewest by a champion team, along with the Rajasthan Royals in the inaugural season in 2008.
The franchise must have been slightly worried though when former KKR player, David Wiese, who is also a former South Africa and Namibia all-rounder said some not very kind things about Chandrakant Pandit’s coaching style. On a podcast in March this year, Weise, who played three matches for the Knight Riders in the 2023 season, said - “He (Pandit) is known in India as a very militant type of coach. He is very strict, very disciplinarian, that type of stuff. Sometimes in franchise cricket, when you have overseas guys, who’ve played all over the world, they don’t need anyone coming and telling them how they need to behave, what they need to wear and what they need to do the whole time. So, that was toughβ¦. I’m not the guy who’s going to bump heads or anything. But there are certain players who are a bit more stubborn than me.”
Though another KKR superstar foreign player, Andre Russell supported Pandit, saying that players have to adjust to a coach’s philosophy and that Pandit had been doing an ‘amazing’ job, fans had noticed that neither Narine nor Russell looked like they were playing free-flowing cricket over the last two seasons. After the SRH innings in the final, when they were restricted to the lowest total in an IPL final (113), Russell himself talked about how he was ‘mentally down’ for a few seasons, though this could have been because of any number of reasons.
According to some reports, Gambhir had long chats with both Narine and Russell in pre-tournament camps in Kolkata.
Both Narine and Russell were pretty much on top of their all-round games this season - another huge shot in the arm for KKR and absolute gold dust for any T20 team.
For Gambhir though the journey to the IPL trophy began with returning to a KKR dressing room that had changed completely.
When he left KKR in 2017, Yusuf Pathan and Robin Uthappa were still playing (and were part of the KKR squad), and players like Suryakumar Yadav, Trent Boult and Piyush Chawla were still with KKR. When Gambhir returned in 2024, the only familiar faces were those of Sunil Narine and Manish Pandey.
Gautam Gambhir please never leave us,the 7 years of exile between 2017-2024 was very tough.
— Aditya βοΈ (@Hurricanrana_27) May 10, 2024
You are an emotion to me and every KKR fan
Got emotional while seeing this ngl β€οΈβπ©Ή pic.twitter.com/cbNqlTm9ib
But he clearly had the backing of the owners and in turn, he and coach Pandit backed the players. And that inevitably results in consistency. They had six 200-plus scores this season. If it weren’t for two huge scores that were chased down against the Knight Riders in surreal style (Rajasthan Royals chased down 224 vs KKR and Punjab Kings chased down 262), they would have had 11 wins in 14 league matches, with 2 no-results. Essentially, they would have lost just one match - against CSK, the only time they scored under 150, batting first (KKR made 137/9, CSK won by 7 wickets making 141/3).
IPL Final Stats |Β KKRβs record-breaking chase, SRH hitting a new low and more
Another thing that Gambhir and KKR managed to do well this season was to get the best out of young Indian players like Ramandeep Singh (with the bat mostly, as he hasn’t really got the chance to bowl this season), Vaibhav Arora and Harshit Rana. Arora played 5 matches in 2023 and took 5 wickets, in 2024 he played 10 games and took 11 scalps. Rana was played in 2 games in 2022, in which he took 2 wickets. In 2023 he played 6 matches and took 5 wickets. This season he featured consistently in the playing XI, playing 13 matches and taking 19 wickets. At one time a net bowler with the Gujarat Titans, Rana, a right-arm pacer from Delhi has a strike rate better than that of the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Avesh Khan, T Natarajan and Arshdeep Singh. Rana and Arora were the fast bowlers Shreyas Iyer relied on when Starc was not at his best.
The young pacers, along with a fired-up Starc in the playoffs, the veteran Russell and the spin duo of Narine and Chakravarthy saw KKR bowl out opposition teams as many as six times this season - the most ever by any team in one season of the IPL.
Creating an environment where everyone is keen to give his or her best and where people know they will be supported and backed to the hilt, where everyone is on the same page is not a utopian concept. It can exist in a classroom, in a corporate office and it’s definitely what all sports teams aim for. Not all of them manage to create it, but when it does come to life, it’s clear to everyone watching that the entire team - ownership, coaching staff, support staff and players - are all in sync. And that is something we saw in the purple and gold brigade in IPL 2024. Is it a coincidence that this team wore a similar look (overall more dominant) as the title-winning teams of 2012 and 2014? You decide. After all, the 2023 team that they had was pretty much the same, with only Shreyas Iyer missing with a back injury and Nitish Rana stepping in as skipper.
It would of course be completely unfair to lay all of KKR’ success this season at Gambhir’s doorstep. Chandrakant Pandit’s coaching acumen and flair are legendary. Abhishek Nayar as assistant coach and Bharat Arun as bowling coach have been instrumental in keeping players finely tuned, both physically and mentally. Shreyas Iyer is just the right kind of person to helm a team like KKR, which has superstar players and coaches as well as young talent. Iyer is calm and composed and stays on top of the game situation. He is also a tremendously talented batter. This season he averaged 39 with the bat, with two fifties. He plays the sheet anchor’s role to perfection and can switch gears quickly.
Gambhir’s ‘homecoming’ to KKR has been a happy and successful one. But the million-dollar question now is - will the KKR roster continue to have Gautam Gambhir as mentor or will Gambhir have to leave IPL cricket to take up the post of the Indian senior men’s team’s head coach? There is a very strong buzz that Gambhir is on top of the BCCI’s wishlist and there’s no doubt that KKR’s turnaround in fortunes this season is one of the main reasons (if not the biggest) for BCCI to want him to replace Rahul Dravid, who does not want a contract extension.
If Gambhir does get the high-profile job, it could produce a few ripples in the Indian dressing room. But it would also mean that KKR and the city of joy will lose the services of one of their favourite adopted sons.
Every KKR fan is also a fan of Indian cricket. But this is one emotional conundrum that might be a tad bit difficult to settle.