IPL 2022 | KKR vs RR | How can KKR weave their purple magic again?

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will face Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the 47th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022. After an excellent start to the season, KKR have lost their momentum, losing five matches on the trot.

The Men in Purple will be looking to bounce back with a win against RR and get their campaign back on track. However, KKR needs to mend a few major holes to win the match against the Men in Pink. So, let us look at what KKR can do to return to winning ways:

Opening pair: The biggest woe for KKR in their batting has been their opening partnership. In the last five matches, they have used five different opening pairs. The openers average a mere 8.2, which has led them to constantly chop and change and try different combinations at the top of the order.

The first thing they should do is back the current pair of Venkatesh Iyer and Aaron Finch. Although their form of late hasn't been good enough, the two can indeed turn out to be the ideal opening pair for the team.

Middle Order: The team's middle order hasn't been able to deliver under pressure. They have gone about changing the batting order a lot, but things haven't worked as they would have liked. The middle-order batters look clueless about their role in the team.

Shreyas Iyer has been in a somewhat decent touch scoring 290 runs in the tournament at an average of 36.25 and a strike rate of 137.44. Besides Iyer, it looks like Nitish Rana has regained his form in the last match with a brilliant knock of 57 runs off 34 balls.

So, KKR can plan their middle-order around these two batters. If a couple of wickets fall early, these two should be out there stabilizing the innings. The other batters should try and up the scoring rate by batting around these two.

Bowling: The brightest star for KKR bowling has been Umesh Yadav. He has picked up 14 wickets in nine matches at a strike rate of 15.43. Alongside Umesh, Sunil Narine has bowled economically. But death bowling has been an issue for the team.

KKR has conceded runs at an economy rate of 11.57 runs per over, and the Balls Per Dismissal for them has been 11.43 in the tournament. So they will have to resolve their death over issues quickly to return to winning ways.

They don't have an out and out death bowler in the team. Russell does bowl in the death, but there is a big question mark over who bowls from the other end. The only way out that I can see is they play both Pat Cummins and Tim Southee in the team, or they ask Narine to try and stop the batter from going all out.