Kolkata Knight Riders Squad Review 2018

Last year IPL - Indian Premier League completed 10 glorious years. As announced a grand auction was held at Bangalore in January 2018. With the return of two popular franchise team Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, the auction got so much excitement all over the world. After so many discussion the decision was taken of retaining players that each team will be able to retain max 3 players. So all 8 teams announced their list of retained players. 

8 IPL franchises retain these following players

Kolkata Knight Riders	Andre Russell, Sunil Narine
Royal Challengers Bangalore	Virat Kohli, Sarfaraz Khan, AB de Villiers
Chennai Super Kings	MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja
Mumbai Indians	Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah
Sunrisers Hyderabad	David Warner, Bhuvneshwar Kumar
Rajasthan Royals	Steve Smith
Kings XI Punjab	Axar Patel
Delhi Daredevils	Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Chris Morris

Coming to the retaining decision of Kolkata based franchise Kolkata Knight Riders decided to retain hard hitter all-rounder Andre Russel and Mystery spinner-batsman Sunil Narine. After completing one year ban on cricket Russel will be super excited to back in the game with a bang. And what else is there to talk about the magnificent Sunil Narine. This duo going to play a vital role for KKR in IPL 2018. We will be looking forward to watch so many 4s and 6s all around the ground this year from them. We will be ready to cheer for each and every wicket taken by them.

Now coming to the auction Kolkata Knight Riders bench was ready with their plan. But there was a big decision to make by them, as Gautam Gambhir who was behind all the success of last 7 years requested KKR not to bid from them or use the RTM card. So that he can play for his home team.  That decision surely made all the KKR fans very much sad.

The next two buy was quite expensive for KKR. But has to say picking up Chris Lynn and Mitchel Starc has made the team stronger. While Lynn can make runs with magnificent run rat, Starc can pick up quick wickets with his fiery bowling. KKR fans must be very happy to have these two Aussie players in the team. Lynn sanity will be back this year again at the Eden Gardens.

We know that Kolkata Knight Riders team management always made their team with a different thought each and every time. They always prefer great talent rather than big names, so that team can be a good mixture of good talents and experience. That's why they decided to focus on the young Indian talents who were doing great for the U-19 team in the World Cup in New Zealand. They just went for some of the best from the team by picking up Subhman Gill, Kamlesh Nagarkoti and Shibam Mavi. We should not forget that Shubhman Gill was selected the Man of the tournament in U-19 ICC World Cup. Kamlesh Nagarkoti and Mavi are now well known for their pace bowling with 140+ kmph speed. With the new bouncy pitch at the Eden Gardens, these two bowlers can be dangerous for the opposition teams. 

Later KKR team used their RTM cards to bring Robin Uthappa, Piyush Chawla and Kuldeep Yadav back in their squad for IPL 2018. Dinesh Kartik, Nitish Rana and Ishank Jaggi were picked up to bring strength in the middle order of the team. To make the bowling line-up strong Vinay Kumar, Cameron Delport and Mitchel Johnson were brought in with some domestic players with good performances like A Wankhede, Rinku Singh.

So, at last, we can tell that like every year the team is a good mixture of experience and talents. Though we don't have too many big names in the team, we can expect young knights to perform well to keep the good performance of the team throughout the tournament. 

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I am super excited to watch these knights rocking each and every game in this year IPL. What do you think? Don't forget to let us know by commenting below. 

The Speciality of Rahul Dravid in Indian Cricket.

On 3rd February 2018 U-19 boys of the Indian Cricket Team won the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup (4th title) in New Zealand under the captaincy of Prithvi Shaw. The whole team was under the training with the guidance of Rahul Dravid. They not just won the tournament, they outplayed each and every team they faced to progress to the top place of the tournament.

• 14th January India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 100 runs.
• 16th January India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 10 wickets.
• 19th January India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 10 wickets.
• 26th January India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 131 runs.
• 30th January India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 203 runs.
• 3rd February India U19 defeated Australia U19 by 8 wickets.

Shubman Gill was selected as the Player of the Tournament for his outstanding batting performance at the knock out stage as well as in other matches also. Anukul Roy became the best bowler to take most wickets(14). Captain Prithvi Shaw was also in good touch with the bat. It was exciting to see young Indian bowlers Shivam Mavi, Ishan Porel, Kamlesh Nagarkoti bowling at a superb pace to knockout the batsmen. All those stats described that they have gone through outstanding coaching to become eligible to take home the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup.

Rahul Dravid was an important part of Indian Cricket Team when he was a part of the national team. He has saved his team many times from defeat and that's why people call him "The wall of Indian Cricket". Unfortunately, he was able to win a world cup as a player. But after he took the responsibility of the U-19 boys in 2015, people started dreaming to see him winning world cup as a coach. He was very closed to win the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup in 2016. But his boys were defeated by U-19 West Indies boys in a thrilling final by 5 wickets (with 3 balls remaining) in Dhaka. But this time he got the taste of winning a world cup as a coach and we Indians are super happy about that.

While talking about getting the world cup as a coach he said, actually he is not too much disappointed for not getting world cup as a player, but winning a world cup is always special. He gave all the credit to the boys in blue for their amazing performance. But it was the players who told media how Rahul Dravid told them not to think about IPL auction when they were on the list on the day of the auction or Playing against Pakistan in the high voltage semi-final. 

We are very much thankful to Rahul Dravid for your contribution in Indian Cricket. Thank you again for making the future stars of our country.