Quinton de Kock, Anrich Nortje and assistant coach Ottis Gibson had a relaxing session with the golf club at the RCGC greens on Tuesday morning.
But all the unwinding doesn’t keep the Kolkata Knight Riders away from worrying about the playoffs spot moving further away. As it stands now, the defending champions need to win five of their remaining six games to earn a playoff berth.
Considering how the Knights have been playing lately, insipid batting has been the main reason for them slipping to seventh in the table. A little more flexibility in the final XI selection and the Impact Player choice may brighten matters.
With due respect to the Knights’ massive faith in their Caribbean duo of Sunil Narine and Andre Russell, they can still be a little more judicious in selecting the other two foreign players in the XI. Including Rovman Powell, even as an Impact Player by slotting three overseas cricketers initially in the XI, is certainly one of them.
“Rovman has been at his consistent best over the past year. He’s certainly worth a chance, while I also feel it would be a bold step to make him open the innings.
“If Narine can open, so can he. With his power, he could be more devastating when
the pitch is fresher,” former Windies selector Roland Butcher told The Telegraph from Bridgetown.
Powell had to hand the West Indies’ T20I captaincy over to Shai Hope lately. But it was under his leadership since being named captain in May 2023 that the Windies had registered home (T20I) series wins over India, England and South Africa. Those series victories had come after a long period of low for the side.
Essentially a middle-order batter, Powell has a 140.32 strike rate in T20Is. In the IPL, where he has played 27 matches so far, the 31-year-old has batted primarily in the lower-middle order, aggregating 360 runs at an average of 18.94 and a healthy strike rate of 147.54.
Strikingly, in both international cricket and the IPL, Powell has produced two impactful knocks at the Eden, the home of the Knights.
An unbeaten 36-ball 68 batting at No.5 had almost sealed the game in a T20I against India in February 2022. On April 16 last year, coming in at No.8, Powell, then with Rajasthan Royals, hit 26 off 13 balls and featured in a game-turning 57-run seventh-wicket stand with centurion Jos Buttler, as the side overhauled KKR’s 223/6 to win by two wickets. So, Powell does have some experience with the Eden conditions.
“When we are playing each team, it’s always about the combination. And for us, each and every player is important. Whatever the combination we are talking about, we’ll see how we deal with every player,” captain Ajinkya Rahane said at the Knight Golf event on Tuesday.
Still hopeful
The Knights have not given up hope. They are drawing inspiration from their turnaround in 2014 when they emerged IPL champions for the second time and in 2021, where they finished runners-up.
“This is a very resilient team. We all know what happened in 2014, and then we reached the final in 2021. There are still plenty of games left, and it’s a matter of somebody showing that inspiration to get us across the line,” KKR CEO and managing director Venky Mysore said.
