There’s plenty of buzz around the Kolkata Knight Riders camp surrounding Shreyas Iyer. The 27-year-old was the team’s marquee signing in the IPL 2022 mega auction at a whopping INR 12.25 CR. Although there was enough speculation surrounding it already, Kolkata Knight Riders confirmed that he will be leading the side in IPL 2022.
Shreyas Iyer has had a terrific stint as IPL captain with Delhi Capitals. He led their resurgence and Delhi were one of the most consistent IPL teams over the last few seasons. He also led them to the final of IPL 2020 where they ended up falling one step short against Mumbai Indians.
Ahead of the 15th season of the Indian Premier League, former Australian batter and Kolkata Knight Riders mentor David Hussey has lavished praise on Shreyas Iyer. Hussey praised Iyer’s cricketing brain and mentioned that he has had plenty of experience with Delhi Capitals which he can hopefully translate with Kolkata Knight Riders.
“Shreyas is a born leader, just the way he walks around, he commands respect. Knowing Pat (Cummins) really well, he would be a good deputy and would also lead from the front,” Hussey said during a virtual press conference on Wednesday.
Pat Cummins was also among the players who was being considered for the leadership role of the franchise vacated by Eoin Morgan. Cummins was recently appointed as the Test captain of Australia following the Tim Paine scandal and he led them with distinction during the Ashes series against England. Cummins is currently busy with the Australian squad on the tour of Pakistan and is likely to miss the first five matches of IPL 2022.
“But the way Shreyas has captained in the past for Delhi, he has a very good cricket brain and a nice vision of how to play the game and I think he will express himself really well. I think it’s a smart move from Brendon (McCullum) and KKR management,” he added.
Shreyas Iyer has had a pretty solid IPL career so far. He has scored 2375 runs at an average of 31.67 in 87 matches. Iyer also has a strike rate of 124 and is one of the best players of spin in the entire league. The middle-order batter has also been in phenomenal form in international cricket recently and was the top-scorer for India during the T20I series against Sri Lanka, scoring over 200 runs without getting dismissed even once in three matches!
