Kolkata Knight Riders review (4.5/10): Nothing major wrong with squad, just the case of non-performance ...Middle East

14 matches, 5 wins and 7 losses; eighth place finish in IPL 2025 isn’t what KKR would have hoped for, after lifting the trophy in 2024. Of course, the times were different last year, with Shreyas Iyer, Gautam Gambhir and Abhishek Nayar at the helm, which wasn’t the case this time around, but still Kolkata had managed to assemble a decent squad, that failed to live up to the expectations.

All their top bowlers and batters failed alike, or at least did not perform consistently well, to repeat last year’s performance. Especially, batting was big-big let down. Plus, a pitch-related controversy at the start of the tournament did not do them any good, and their spinners/other bowlers were always under pressure at home — The Eden Gardens. Now that their campaign is long done, InsideSport reviews KKR’s 2025 season.

IPL 2025 KKR Retained & Released Players

Retained Players: Sunil Narine, Rinku Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana.

Released Players: Shreyas Iyer, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Nitish Rana, Sherfane Rutherford, Phil Salt, KS Bharat, Manish Pandey, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Anukul Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Suyash Sharma, Allah Ghazanfar, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Vaibhav Arora, Mitchell Starc, Chetan Sakariya.

KKR Full Squad

Quinton de Kock (wk), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (c), Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh , Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Anrich Nortje, Varun Chakaravarthy, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Luvnith Sisodia, Venkatesh Iyer, Spencer Johnson, Anukul Roy, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Mayank Markande, Shivam Shukla, Chetan Sakariya.

No one can really point fingers at the KKR squad, and despite some big names missing from previous season, they had all bases covered. Yes, captaincy candidate could have been an issue, as Ajinkya Rahane did not come across as the most effective captain, but then, it seemed like the management did not want to hand over the reigns to Sunil Narine, Andre Russell or even Rinku Singh.

Kolkata Knight Riders Review (4/10)

KKR paid a heavy price for letting Shreyas Iyer go. Not only is he one of the best leaders in the tournament, but was the backbone of their batting order. His absence, and Venkatesh Iyer’s poor form meant, their other batters were always going to struggle. More importantly, their ploy of using Sunil Narine as an opener looked like a stale move; something that the opposition teams had planned in advance. And they did not look to change that at all. There were problems in their bowling attack too, and missed Mitchell Starc.

Highs:

Lows:

Looking Ahead at IPL 2026

Firstly, the team needs to get a captain, who can be their best performer too; same with the vice-captain too. If the team is looking long-term, then Rinku Singh and Raghuvanshi can be great bets. They need to strengthen their batting, and get a solid foreign pacer. Now, who they get is a discussion for later, but the team should be ready to fill in the gaps, even it comes at a price. But as discussed earlier, they had a decent squad to start with.

So, there shouldn’t be changes in abundance, but 3-4 needed for sure.

Kolkata Knight Riders review (4.5/10): Nothing major wrong with squad, just the case of non-performance Inside Sport India.

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