Knight Riders to take on spirited Sunrisers in high-stakes IPL final
CHENNAI: Tactician par excellence Gautam Gambhir couldn’t have envisaged a battle of brains with a more different kind of adversary than the smiling yet ruthless Pat Cummins as Kolkata Knight Riders face a spirited Sunrisers Hyderabad in a mega IPL final here on Sunday.
Marquee sporting clashes always pit one leader against another but this IPL final will be about Gambhir’s brain, which is always ticking against a captain who has transcended boundaries to turn into a leader of men.
Somewhere along the line, KKR’s Shreyas Iyer, who is playing his second final as captain, has turned into bit of a sideshow as a global cricketing royalty in Cummins faces an IPL czar in Gambhir.
A decade ago, no one would have placed a bet on Cummins being a captain and winning the ODI World Cup, World Test Championship and Ashes in a space of six months, and now, leading SRH to their maiden IPL title would be the icing on the cake.
“A very practical guy, very humble, very empathetic to his fellow teammates and coaching staff. He is into the statistics and gets the information that he needs against a particular opposition in certain conditions,” SRH assistant coach Simon Helmot described the skipper in a nutshell after the team’s win against Rajasthan Royals in the second Qualifier. “He doesn’t waste time in (team) meetings. Our team meeting today was 35 seconds. But, a lot of information has already been spoken about,” he said.
The two teams met in the first qualifier in which KKR outwitted SRH with clever bowling plans on a massive Motera ground and in Chennai, Iyer’s men will again start as favourites. The last time KKR played an IPL final in Chennai, it was against Chennai Super Kings in 2012 in one of the most epic contests, which established Gambhir’s credentials as an astute leader of men.
He not only had the right game plan but also had his heart in the right place during those heady years.
Gambhir went on to win another title in 2014, which made him a sentimental favourite and now he is on the cusp of becoming the man, who as captain and mentor has won the IPL trophy for the same team. Obviously a bigger perk in Indian head coach’s assignment awaits Gambhir and a trophy would not only burnish his credentials but also raise the demand to have him in that Indian dressing. If one looks at man-to-man comparison, KKR tick more boxes in terms of overall match-winners with Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, the two Iyers — Shreyas and Venkatesh — the two Ranas — Nitish and Harshit — and spinner Varun Chakravarthy in their ranks.
However, SRH’s uncapped domestic stars like Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Reddy have done really well along with outof-favour India internationals such as Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan and Jaydev Unadkat.
One interesting aspect of the IPL final is that the match features no member from India’s main T20 World Cup squad. The only Indian player associated with the final will be Rinku Singh, who is in the reserves.