Kolkata Knight Riders received quite a lot of plaudits for the bowling unit they picked up during the IPL 2026 auction. However, former Indian opener Aakash Chopra raised a few concerns over their batting department and discussed various combinations that the side can put on, with an overseas keeping option, which might weaken the middle-order.
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“A topic of discussion would be which four overseas would play. Among the four overseas, if they make a keeper-batter open, who will bat in the lower order? That is a big question. They have generally had a keeper opener. They have taken Tim Seifert and Finn Allen this time,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
If you play either of them and open with Ajinkya Rahane alongside him, you will play Cameron Green at No. 3. The questions start coming after that. Angkrish Raghuvanshi at No. 4, Rinku Singh at No. 5, Ramandeep Singh at No. 6 and Tejasvi Singh at No. 7. It’s not sounding that great to me. It might work out, but is it sounding good? Your middle order looks slightly cold,” he added.
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“If I make Narine open with Rahane, play Cameron Green at No. 3, Angkrish Raghuvanshi as a keeper at No. 4 or else get Tejasvi to keep, then Rinku at No. 5, Ramandeep at No. 6 and Rovman Powell at No. 7 or vice versa, and then Tejasvi, how is it looking now? It looks a better team. You can use Tejasvi if required. If you don’t need him, you can get Anukul Roy,” he said.
“They already had 16 overs of bowling. They now have 22-23 overs of bowling. They already had Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy. Then two or three overs from Cameron Green and four overs from Matheesha Pathirana/Mustafizur Rahman. This is a gun bowling unit,” Chopra observed.
Kolkata Knight Riders Full IPL 2026 squad: Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Rovman Powell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Umran Malik, Cameron Green, Finn Allen, Matheesha Pathirana, Tejasvi Singh, Kartik Tyagi, Prashant Solanki, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert, Mustafizur Rahman, Sarthak Ranjan, Daksh Kamra, Rachin Ravindra, Akash Deep
