SWOT analysis of KKR ahead of IPL 2024

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had a huge amount at their disposal during the auction. They had 32.70 crore INR. They spent most of their purse for buying Australia's star pacer Mitchell Starc for 24.75 crore INR. KKR has brought back their former skipper Gautam Gambhir as a mentor, when, the franchise saw some golden days during his 6 years stint of captaincy winning the Indian Premier League Trophy (IPL) twice under the former batter. 

In the previous edition of the IPL, they did not finish as per the expectations. As their regular captain, Shreyas Iyer was missing the season due to an injury. He has comeback with a bang for the national team and has been in good form as well. Rinku Singh has been much experienced and is a capped player as well. 

The two-time IPL champions got some steal deals in the auction picking Chetan Sakariya and KS Bharat in their base price. Alongside that they have the services of Starc who will be returning to the toughest T20 league after 8 years gap. The Kolkata-franchise will love to win the trophy for the third time. In the article we will be doing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of the side ahead of the season to start. 

SWOT analysis of KKR 

Strength

The strength of KKR is their top and middle order batting, with Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, the lineup is looking dangerous and on their day they can beat any opponent. The firepower of Gurbaz in the top order will help the franchise as he had fine a ODI World Cup 2023 with the Afghans. With the option of Jason Roy they will have the probability of playing him. He performed brilliantly last season as well for them. With the addition of KS Bharat and Ramandeep Singh the middle and lower middle order is also looking formidable.

The spin department of KKR has been one their biggest strength with likes of Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy, Suyash Sharma and now with Mujeeb ur Rahman in the side the spin is also looking dangerous and the pitch of Eden Gardens now also will be relatively slower and turning as well. 

Weakness 

The biggest weakness of the team is that they do not have a good looking pace attack on paper though they have added the services of Starc and Gus Atkinson as well. But their Indian bowling attack is still looking a little weak. Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora and Chetan Sakariya all the three are inexperienced as they have not played many matches for the national side as well. The first two are yet to make a debut as well for team India. 

Opportunites

Gautam Gambhir's comeback in the side and his mentality of winning games will surely help the side as it did for the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), as they qualified for back to back knockouts in the last two editions. His presence as a mentor will be a key for the side and they can have the opportunity qualifying for the knockout and even winning the trophy as well. 

Threats

The biggest threat to the side is Mitchell Starc's injury as the bowler is known to be injury prone. The speedstar who is coming back after 8 years his form will also be a concern for the side. Though Atkinson is a backup but he has no experience of playing in IPL.  The form of Andre Russell will also be a headache for the side as the big Jamaican all-rounder has not performed as per expections in the last two season of the tournament.