Trusty old template brings fresh PowerPlay hope for KKR
Gautam Gambhir enthusiastically clapped as he walked out into the Chinnadamy Stadium playing area after 32 minutes of Kolkata Knight Riders chasing 182. Virat Kohli, then occupying a different part of the field, wasn’t in Gambhir’s vicinity and therefore this dramatic entry at the strategic time-out didn’t merit too much attention. The air appeared to have been sucked out of the stadium when KKR’s mentor clapped all the way until he was joined by Sunil Narine and Phil Salt, the opening pair that had plundered 85 runs in the PowerPlay.
The openers of KKR managed to extract almost the same number of runs from the target as Kohli had managed to accumulate by carrying his bat through a challenging, two-paced track during the first innings, in 38 balls of thrilling hitting. Helped on by the arrival of dew as well as some RCB profligacy, KKR made short work of what should have been a competitive score of 182. But more than the two points they bagged or the streak of home team victories in IPL 2024 they ended, the night offered some hope for KKR: that their biggest recent bug bear could have a trusty old solution.
On Friday (March 29), the scene resembled the one on May 7, 2017 at this same location when Narine threw 105 runs of PowerPlay at RCB. Narine returned to the IPL seven years ago after finding his calling as T20 opener for the Melbourne Renegades, and played a devastating role alongside Chris Lynn in an unusual but terrifying partnership. The pair opened 25 times together and scored 707 partnership runs at an impressive run-rate of 10.60 over two seasons.
KKR experienced an evolutionary churn, similar to all sides. They moved on from Lynn and when teams began bowling short and fast at Narine, his batting returns diminished and he duly slid back down the order, coming out to open the innings only seven times in the last four seasons. KKR reached the IPL 2021 final with a strong partnership of Shubman Gill (left) and Venkatesh (right) Iyer, but their stands averaged 50.80 compared to their runs coming at a more modest 7.95 to the over rate. The roulette made several stops after Gill left office in that year.
KKR’s PowerPlay struggles are best underscored by the fact that in the last seven years, they’ve had 29 different opening combinations and two games in, the Salt-Narine combine already has more partnership runs than 20 other pairs that got a KKR innings underway in this time.
One performance, in a stadium like the Chinnaswamy and against one of the seemingly lesser attacks in the competition, is no indication that KKR have landed on a fix or that Narine has rediscovered his batting mojo. For now, running with the move has tactical value. For the Narine-Salt combine is the closest KKR have come to recreating the Narine-Lynn pairing, which offered two-prong dynamism.
At the receiving end on the night, Faf du Plessis said it best when he echoed erstwhile SRH coach Tom Moody’s assessment of bowling to the Narine-Lynn pair from 2017. “With Narine present, it is impractical to utilize spin and pace must be utilized early on. Salt and his playing style make that a favorable match – up also. They were excellent, really broke the game in the first six overs,” the RCB skipper said.
Beyond the usual benefits of a left-right pair, it’s always a great idea to pair a spin hitter with an excellent hitter of speed. Both can maximise their match-ups and cover for the partner’s weaknesses. At 193.78 strike-rate, Narine has delivered spin in the IPL so far. Salt on the other hand has 157.89 strike rate against fast bowlers in T20 cricket. This may be a few points down from Lynn’s scoring rate of 172.67 during that incredible 2017-18 phase but among T20 openers with 4000 runs, Salt is the only one to score at a rate in excess of 150.
He is the opener that offers the promise of both speed and volume of runs while Narine trades off some of the volume for more speed. It is a great combination and together they also lengthen KKR’s batting to a point where they can allow the brains trust some degree of flexibility to control the entry points of key personnel lower down the order like Andre Russell.
These things can end up in funny ways. Salt wasn’t even supposed to be here and his two back-to-back T20I hundreds for England against West Indies hadn’t merited a single bid at last year’s auction. Jason Roy’s withdrawal from the competition created a second window of opportunity. Similarly, Narine, who never opened with Roy last year, may not have been accorded a second chance to open with Salt with Shreyas Iyer confirming that there were deliberations about sending the West Indian to start the chase in Bengaluru.
But once Narine got that tap on the shoulder, there was no backing away, except to deal with the inevitable supply of short-pitched deliveries that arrived once du Plessis shun all spin options at his disposal. Narine had only one task in the PowerPlay – clear the in-field – and he did so consistently and with ease in a 22-ball knock of 47, his first IPL score over 25 in five years. At the other end, Salt followed a half-century in the opener with a 20-ball 30 to effectively polish off the chase in their 32-minutes batting together.
Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and sterner tests await KKR’s newest opening pair, but after the last two years, when a win is rubber-stamped in the batting powerplay, there will undoubtedly be cause for optimism and hope.