Kevin Pietersen in an interview said that he feels the two teams definitely through to the play-offs are Gujarat Titans and Lucknow SuperGiants, and as the expert predicted, both teams are now in the playoffs. However, yesterday’s defeat for Lucknow SuperGiant means the team is out of the tournament now.
It would be surprising to know how many people would have predicted that they would be at the top of the table at this stage, but both teams have been excellent throughout this season and deserve to be there, wrote Pietersen on his Betway Blog.
He further applauded Gujarat Titans by stating its tremendous performance of 10 wins from their 14 games.
He also said that Royal challengers have revealed new players as openers. Faf du Plessis (C) & Anuj Rawat who have been impressive for CSK in the last few years and they had shown tremendously well in the past that they could get starts and hit big shots and definitely lead from the front.
Virat Kohli and Anuj Rawat will be a choice for the second opener. While Virat Kohli wouldn’t mind playing as an opener with Faf du Plessis, Anuj Rawat will be more effective as an opener due to Faf’s expertise according to Kevin.
Jofra Archer will miss the whole summer.
Kevin also talked about Jofra Archer, as It’s terrible news for him and he’ll miss the whole summer.
He said, “I’m finding it difficult to imagine him returning to play long-form cricket again. It’s a horrible reality for him and for England that he sustained another stress fracture to his back.”
He further stated that Jofra Archer still has a top-level white-ball career. Kevin believes that the number of sports scientists complicate things far too much. When he was playing, fast bowlers bowl a lot of overs in the nets and got bowling fit without the help of these people.
The Joining of McCullum
Kevin finds McCullum joining the team as an impressive decision. The 40-year-old New Zealander, who captained the Knight Riders in the lucrative league’s 2009 season, was named head coach before the 2020 season and served for three years, helping KKR to the final in the 2021 season. He is a natural talent, and England must back him earlier Kevin further stated.
By giving rest to his words, he said that, “McCullum can get them to play better cricket. I don’t agree that these aren’t the best players in England; I just think that the standard of players coming out of county cricket is poor and hopefully, McCullum can get more out of them.”
Leave a Reply