CHENNAI: The year was 2012. Shah Rukh Khan‘s daughter Suhana still hadn’t reached her teens. After the first four years of struggle, as Kolkata Knight Riders won a magical final at Chepauk, beating two-time defending champions Chennai Super Kings, ‘King Khan’ couldn’t control his emotions and was on the verge of jumping from the first floor balcony of the stadium.
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Suhana stopped her dad that moment, but the celebration (and pandemonium) that followed in the team hotel through the night was the experience of a lifetime for those who were there.
Cut to 2024 and KKR are close to revisiting similar sensations. But standing in their way is an unpredictable Sunrisers Hyderabad team, who have lost twice to the Knights this year, the most recent being in the first Qualifier in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.
Some of the key protagonists of that 2012 triumph for KKR are still there – then-captain Gautam Gambhir is now the mentor while Sunil Narine remains the No. 1 weapon for the Kolkata team, albeit in a different form.
Now with a much-modified action, Narine, with an economy rate of 6.9, is still a bowler who is difficult to score runs off. But it’s his no-holds barred batting at the top of the order that has become one of the talking points of this IPL.
The West Indian has the ability to clear the fence whenever the ball is in his hitting arc, which can be worrying for somebody like Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who banks on his swing early on at a pace of around 130 km/hr. For SRH, the best chance against Narine will be to try and bowl short at a good pace, something that skipper Pat Cummins can do if he chooses to.
On Friday, SRH had two unlikely bowling heroes in left-arm spinners Abhishek Sharma and Shahbaz Ahmed on a black-soil pitch, but the track is going to be changed for the final. The game the wrist spinners should get a bit of help, provided the dew doesn’t come in.
Narine and his mystery spin partner C Varun, who has got 20 wickets in this IPL, could be crucial. Captain Shreyas Iyer stressed on that in the press conference just before KKR’s practice schedule was halted by an afternoon shower.
“Narine and Varun’s roles are going to be important. They have been spot on in terms of executing their plans and have been able to control the runs in the middle overs. I hope they will be able to do that on Sunday as well,” Iyer said.
All the indications are that KKR will start the final as overwhelming favourites, but there’s something about this SRH team that doesn’t quite rule them out of the contest.
While Cummins’ astute captaincy is one of the crucial elements, it is the explosive nature of their opening duo of Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head that will keep KKR team management worried. Head didn’t play the first time these two teams played against each other this season, while in Qualifier 1, he got a first-ball duck, unable to deal with the pace and swing of the ever-improving Mitchell Starc. But there’s always an unpredictability about Head’s game and captain Iyer will hope that Starc delivers the sucker punch once again early on.
The second big hurdle that can come in KKR’s way is in the form of Heinrich Klaasen, who was brilliant during his 34-ball 50 in the second Qualifier on Friday.
He has everything in his batting arsenal to deal with the spin threat of Narine and Varun and add to that the confidence that he has gained from his Friday show.
But KKR too are hungry. Their mentor Gautam Gambhir’s “obsession for success” seems to have rubbed on and it will need an extraordinary performance from SRH to stop the marauding Knights from running away with their third title.
