KKR vs MI: Kolkata Players not listening to Shreyas Iyer and Chandrakant Pandit? Harshit Rana's bombshell dressing room update

Kolkata Knight Riders' uncapped seamer Harshit Rana has claimed that the team is solely focusing on executing the style of play Gautam Gambhir wants to implement. 

Harshit Rana's comments came after the Knight Riders registered their 8th victory of the IPL 2024 season against Gautam Gambhir's former franchise. KKR had traveled to the Ekana stadium to take on the Lucknow Super Giants for a return fixture. In their previous meeting, the East Indian outfit had come out on top by 8 wickets on April 14th. 

Harshit Rana claims Gautam Gambhir knows how to turn games around

While speaking to the IPL 2024 commentators after the match, Harshit Rana revealed just how impactful and influential Gautam Gambhir has been for KKR. Gambhir's legacy in the franchise will be hard to match by any captain as the former India opener delivered 2 IPL trophies during his time as captain in 2012 and 2014. 

Since then, the Knight Riders have reached the finale only once in 2021. In fact, in 2022 and 2023, Kolkata found it extremely tough to even think of finishing in the top 4 of the points table, finishing 7th in the last two seasons. However, KKR have become a different beast ever since Gautam Gambhir left LSG and took over his former franchise as the mentor. 

Kolkata's fearless and bold approach was first made clear when they made Mitchell Starc - the most expensive player in IPL during the 2024 auction. But when the season began, KKR well and truly maintained that approach, and a lot of the credit must go to Gautam Gambhir. 

Harshit Rana confirmed that Gambhir has passed on a lot of knowledge to the team as to how they can turn games around from tricky situations. About yesterday's 98-run win, Rana claimed that Gambhir had given freedom to the bowlers in terms of where to pitch the ball.  

"We focus a lot on the style of cricket that Gautam Gambhir wants us to play. He has a lot of knowledge on how to turn games in our favor. Like today he gave the bowlers a free hand on what areas to target on the pitch." - Harshit Rana said after KKR's win over LSG.

Harshit Rana also had some bright words for himself and the other KKR bowlers who bowled out the Lucknow franchise for 137. LSG were chasing down a mammoth total of 236 but Rana and Varun Chakravarthy's 3 wickets each, Mitchell Starc and Sunil Narine's 1 wicket, and Andre Russell's brace paved the way for KKR's win. 

On that note, Rana claimed that the bowlers read the surface in Ekana stadium very well and they knew exactly where to target the LSG batters. "KKR read the wicket very well. The areas we had to bowl, we targeted the right places." - Rana concluded. 

KKR go on top with their 98-run win

Meanwhile, with their 98-run victory over the Super Giants, KKR replaced the Rajasthan Royals for the first time at the top of the IPL 2024 table. KKR and RR are now level on 16 points but Shreyas Iyer's side is at the summit due to a greater net run rate of +1.453 as compared to Rajasthan's +0.622. Their next clash is against bottom-sided Mumbai Indians. 

Read More:  IPL 2024 Points Table