Team composition
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Total EFscore of top 11 players: 0.955
Total EFscore of all ranked players: 1.007
Kolkata Knight Riders are fairly well-stocked in the bowling department. Sunil Narine is an excellent slow bowler in the subcontinent conditions, and he will be looking to choke the batsmen for runs once again. The fast bowling department will be handled by the South African battery of Jacques Kallis and Morne Morkel, together with Vinay Kumar and/or Umesh Yadav.
This is probably the only team in the tournament to have as many as four players who can be labeled as genuine all-rounders. Where the Kolkata Knight Riders lack is in their batting department though. Their batting line-up is pretty thin after Gambhir, Kallis and Uthappa, and they may struggle to put up enough runs on board in the tournament.
Roster management: In order to bolster the batting line-up, the team will likely include Manish Pandey in the playing eleven. They may also prefer to field Shakib Al Hasan, which means that Ryan ten Doeschate will most likely be left out. The conditions will certainly favor Shakib’s spin bowling, and his batting skills will also bring some balance to the bowling-heavy line-up of Kolkata Knight Riders.
Dark horse: Gautam Gambhir is out of the Indian squad, and he will try to make his case for inclusion in the next year’s ODI World Cup team with a good performance in the IPL. He led the KKR magnificently to their maiden IPL victory in the 2012 season, but couldn’t repeat the feat last year. The team will be looking up to him to repeat the heroics from two years back.