Kolkata Knight Riders know their season might be over before they even walk out at Eden Gardens on Sunday. A Rajasthan Royals win over Mumbai Indians earlier in the afternoon would end KKR’s slim play-off hopes, yet the squad insist they are still “believing to the very end”.
After five defeats on the trot at the start of IPL 2026, few outside the camp gave them much chance. Five victories from the next six has dragged them back into the conversation, and head coach Abhishek Nayar puts that recovery down to simple, stubborn consistency.
“When you’re in adverse situations, the one thing as a leadership group that you can do is be consistent with your players,” Nayar said on Saturday afternoon. “The messaging didn’t change a lot, the trust in the players didn’t change a lot. The way we looked at our players didn’t change a lot.”
He admitted that remaining patient was “really hard, when everything around you starts to feel like it’s crumbling… To stay strong to your core values and ethos, as a team and an individual.”
The dressing-room, he added, only began to settle once newcomers grasped their roles. “A lot of the players have come in for the first time in the franchise as well, without making any excuses, we had a lot of injuries going into it – so sometimes it takes time for people to understand what we’re trying to do with the team. And I think once you get that flow – and we talk about momentum being a key integer in T20 cricket – once that momentum starts to build, the belief system starts to build.”
That belief is being tested by yet another casualty list. Angkrish Raghuvanshi, comfortably their leading run-scorer, is out with concussion and a fractured finger. Matheesha Pathirana lasted just eight legitimate deliveries before a side strain ruled him out. Akash Deep and Harshit Rana never even made it to the first game, while Mustafizur Rahman had to be withdrawn under a BCCI directive after the franchise had spent INR 9.20 crore on him at auction.
“It feels like we’ve had a new injury every other day,” a support-staff member muttered, only half-joking, in the indoor nets. The medical team have been so busy that training plans have been rewritten on the hop.
One man refusing to sit out is Varun Chakravarthy. The leg-spinner has bowled through a fractured toe and two busted fingers, and still turned the Gujarat Titans match with four tidy overs. His coach could not hide the admiration.
“For him to go through that and start the season on a topsy-turvy curve, come back into form, have injuries… he’s broken quite a few limbs in this tournament already. Before that, two fingers, and now, his toe,” Nayar said. “I always say the toughest characters learn to go past pain and adversity, and that’s what Varun Chakaravarthy is. He doesn’t seem like a tough character when you speak to him, but internally he’s someone who’s highly motivated and feels very deeply for the franchise.”
Delhi Capitals arrive with nothing to lose, which can be dangerous in the final week. KKR, meanwhile, must juggle the balance of the XI again. Without Raghuvanshi they are tempted to push Venkatesh Iyer back to the top, though management would not confirm. “We’ll look at the surface in the morning,” was the stock line.
Analytically, the match-ups suggest spin will decide the evening. Eden’s black-soil strip has offered grip since the square was refurbished, and both sides rely on slow bowling to stem the run flow at the death. Capitals’ Kuldeep Yadav knows the ground inside out; Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine need to out-bowl him for KKR to survive.
The equation is brutally clear. If Rajasthan lose, Knight Riders must beat Capitals and also hope net run-rate falls their way. Any other scenario, and the purple shirts pack up on Monday.
Seasoned followers accept those odds, yet still sense a flicker. KKR have, after all, made a habit of late charges; they were champions from fourth place in 2012 and 2014. The senior pros have been reminding the younger lads of those stories all week, though they stop short of the grand speeches that so often backfire.
The mood, then, is strangely calm: aware of what is required, resigned to what may happen, proud of what has already been salvaged after that dreadful start. As one player shrugged while gathering his kit: “If we’re still in it when the lights come on, that’ll do for now.”
