Familiar faces were back at the Eden Gardens, as Kolkata Knight Riders started their preparatory camp ahead of the Indian Premier League 2025. The three-time champions will look to defend their title. There will be no Gautam Gambhir, Abhishek Nayar or Ryan ten Doeschate in the coaching staff for KKR as the likes of Dwayne Bravo, Ottis Gibson and a few new faces will be in the dugout.
As has been the tradition, KKR started their preparatory camp with a “Wicket Pujo” where the entire squad, coaches, Eden Gardens pitch curator Sujan Mukherjee and the groundstaff assembled, with head coach Chandrakant Pandit. KKR’s new captain, Ajinkya Rahane, broke a coconut to start afresh before a gruelling season. Pandit also formally introduced the new coaches like Gibson and Bravo to the squad. With Bravo in the set-up, one expects some entertainment and it has been reliably learnt that the former CSK man is working on a new song on KKR’s slogan ‘Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo’ and it could be labelled as the ‘Champion Edition’.
Andre Russell was the first to pad up as he took a few throwdowns before starting to launch his big hits. While there is nothing too much to take away from IPL practices as batters mostly focus on range hitting, there were plenty of conversations between Bravo and players with the new coaches easing into the set-up. The intensity was pretty high, given it was the first hit at the park for the defending champions. There seemed to be a good bonding already between captain Rahane and vice-captain and KKR’s Rs 23.75 crore recruit Venkatesh Iyer and it’ll be interesting to see how the leadership group operates in the new season.
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Apart from Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Spencer Johnson, Varun Chakaravarthy and Harshit Rana who are scheduled to join the squad in the coming days. Umran Malik, too, is likely to join ahead of the opener against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, on March 22. He is waiting for a final fitness clearance from the National Cricket Academy.
It also remains to be seen whether the new coaching staff, albeit under head coach Pandit, will be able to replicate the success of their predecessors. KKR will train everyday ahead of the new IPL season with only March 14 (Holi) and 19 as their designated off days.
There also will be an opening ceremony on March 22 at the Eden Gardens with the likes of Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Arijit Singh likely to feature in the spectacles. The names are yet to be finalised and a few more names could be added to the list. KKR will also organise a fan event, like last year, likely on March 19, to introduce the new squad to the fans.
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