Kolkata Knight Riders had finished the previous season in seventh place in the IPL standings, with six wins and eight losses. KKR, who will be led by Shreyas Iyer once again, will kick off their IPL 2024 campaign against Sunrisers Hyderabad at their home ground of Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Saturday.

KKR will want to come up with a collective effort and tick the right boxes, which they could not consistently do in the previous season. KKR has welcomed back Gautam Gambhir as a mentor and the two-time IPL winning captain will look to guide the young players on the right track along with head coach Chandrakant Pandit.

Strengths: KKR’s biggest strength has to be its spin battery. The two-time champions have spinners like Varun Chakaravarthy, Sunil Narine, Mujeeb ur Rahman, and Suyash Sharma.

Chakravarthy had bowled at his best in the previous season whereas Sunil Narine has all the experience under his belt. Moreover, their batting will depend on Indian core players as they have batters like Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, and Manish Pandey.

Weaknesses: Barring Mitchell Starc, for whom KKR spent a whopping amount of INR 24.75 crores, there isn’t a lot of depth in the team’s fast bowling unit.

KKR Predicted XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Mitchell Starc, Chetan Sakariya, Varun Chakravarthy, Vaibhav Arora.

Squad: Shreyas Iyer, Phil Salt, K.S. Bharat, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (AFG), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford (WI), Manish Pandey, Andre Russell (WI), Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine (WI), Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc (AUS), Dushmantha Chameera (SL), Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman (AFG).