IPL 2018  | There’s a method to the madness in KKR’s team selection, claims Chris Lynn

The Kolkata Knight Riders outfit underwent a major overhaul ahead of the season with the likes of former skipper Gautam Gambhir, Umesh Yadav, Chris Woakes, Manish Pandey and Yusuf Pathan all leaving for greener pastures. Under the new leadership of Dinesh Karthik, a young and relatively inexperienced KKR side has surprisingly performed above expectations so far in the league.

The narrow defeat in the last game against Mumbai Indians has surely made the team hungrier for a win in the next game, which would pretty much cement their spot for the playoffs of the league. Jacques Kallis and his assistant Simon Katich have been trying numerous combinations this season, which has sometimes worked well and sometimes backfired.

The latest such instance came against Mumbai Indians where promoting Shubman Gill to open, went horribly wrong for the side. However, Aussie big-hitter Chris Lynn has claimed that there is a pattern to the madness in the dugout as Kallis, Katich, and Karthik all make important decisions regarding the starting XI players ahead of matches.

“We didn’t experiment too much last game. Narine was feeling ill, and obviously the heat of the stadium – it wasn’t exactly pleasant out there. So that’s the reason Shubman opened the batting. And long-term that might be a position for Gill.

“We’ve seen he’s a class player and what he has to offer. But I don’t think we’ll experiment too much. There might be one or two changes, but it definitely won’t be unexpected. There’s a method to the madness that Jacques (Kallis) and (Simon) Katich and DK (Dinesh Karthik) put in place and we’re all there to achieve the same goal at the end of the day,” Lynn told WisdenIndia.

After the narrow 13-run loss against Mumbai Indians, Lynn has been adamant that Karthik and boys have been hungry for revenge against at Eden Gardens on Wednesday.

“I think you look at the teams every couple of years and there’s new squads put out, so it’s hard to say. Yes, the win-loss record isn’t great against them but it hasn’t been the same team each year. But we’re going to try and get one back tomorrow night. We definitely owe them one. We feel like we could have won that game the other night (on May 6), so we let that one slip a little bit. 

“It’s a good challenge for us tomorrow night because if we don’t get the win, we’re going to put ourselves under a lot of pressure with the last three games. We don’t want that – even though we play every game as if it’s a final, we try and make it as comfortable as possible,” Lynn said.