The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have been struggling for quite some time now. In this season, the Kolkata Knight Riders is the only team that does not have a 50-plus opening stand this season so far. Young Afghanistani batter Rahmanullah Gurbaz, who was seen opening with Sunil Narine in today’s contest against the Gujarat Giants in place of Proteas’ Quinton de Kock, failed to create an impact with the bat in his inaugural game for the franchise. He was dismissed by Muhammad Siraj on just 1 run in the opening over itself, which led to a disruption in the team’s momentum to chase a mammoth score of 198.
Not a favourable return for Rahmanullah Gurbaz as he is dismissed for just 1️⃣ by Mohammed Siraj
— Rohtash Tanwar (@RohtashTanwar14) April 21, 2025
📷: JioStar #KKRvsGT #IPL2025 #Kolkata #Insidesport #CricketTwitter pic.twitter.com/ve4tAqQSxG
The opening batting combination of KKR stands at the bottom among all teams in IPL 2025. The opening pair for KKR has put together only 152 runs across 8 innings, giving their team a 19.0 runs average per inning, which ranks them at the bottom of the tournament. The best opening partnership KKR has achieved in this competition amounts to 46 runs. Their run rate at 8.44 ranks as the second slowest after CSK. The low scores of their first batting pair during matches have negatively impacted their total batting output in 2025.
Performance in previous seasons
The Kolkata Knight Riders’ batting unit showed the worst performance from the top during IPL seasons 2022 and 2023. During this period, KKR along with being the only squad to maintain less than 20 average at the first wicket, also established themselves as the sole team to score under 7.50 runs per over throughout the opening partnership. Throughout 28 matche,s KKR fielded 14 beginning pair combinations which stood as the highest quantity among all franchises.
Kolkata Knight Riders Playing 11
Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Moeen Ali, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy
Gujarat Titans Playing 11
Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Sherfane Rutherford, Rahul Tewatia, Washington Sundar, Shahrukh Khan, Rashid Khan, Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj
Also Read: GT Vs KKR: Sai-Shubman Dua Parallels Shikhar-Warner And Kohli-Du Plessis In THIS Stellar Record
