Shreyas Iyer sidelined as ex-SRH coach hails Gautam Gambhir as KKR's true leader in IPL 2024

Former Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) head coach Tom Moody showered rich praise on the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) mentor Gautam Gambhir for the exceptional performance of the franchise in the recently concluded Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024).

As Shreyas Iyer said, the Knight Riders 'played like invincibles' in IPL 2024 and kept delivering one after other dominant performances. They finished at the No.1 spot on the points table with 9 wins and 3 losses. KKR ended their group stage campaign with a record-breaking Net Run Rate of 1.428 and they easily won Qualifier 1 to enter the summit clash, before smashing Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) to lift the IPL trophy.

It was Kolkata Knight Riders' third IPL championship win and one common thing in all those title victories was the presence of India great Gautam Gambhir in the dressing room. He was the skipper of the side when they won in 2012 and 2014 and in 2024 he served as the mentor.

Notably, Kolkata Knight Riders had finished seventh in the previous two seasons of the Indian Premier League and they decided to rope in Gautam Gambhir as the mentor for IPL 2024, which changed their fortunes.

Gautam Gambhir took some bold decisions like spending a whopping ₹24.75 crore to acquire the services of left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc and making Sunil Narine open the innings. Narine brought out his best game in IPL 2024 and won the Most Valuable Player of the Season award while Mitchell Starc won back-to-back Player of the Match awards in Qualifier 1 and final.

Most of the credit for the success of Kolkata Knight Riders has been given to Gambhir and Tom Moody became the latest one to shower rich praise on the team mentor.

If Gambhir was still at Lucknow this year, there was no way that Narine would have opened the batting this year - Tom Moody 

During an interaction on ESPNcricinfo, Tom Moody said that Sunil Narine wouldn't have opened the innings in IPL 2024 if Gautam Gambhir hadn't moved bases from Lucknow Super Giants to Kolkata Knight Riders. He said:

"His ability to just get the ship in the right direction. He is very clear in what he believes the dressing room needed to go, the personnel that needed to be in that playing XI and the likes of Narine being back to the top of the order again. If Gambhir was still at Lucknow this year, there was no way that Narine would have opened the batting this year."

Tom Moody further labeled Gautam Gambhir as a true leader and said that he credited a huge impact on the team. Moody said:

"A lot of things have just worked perfectly for KKR this year, in a positive way. I think Gambhir should be given a huge amount of credit for his impact as a leader. He has created stability and clarity that is the most important thing. When you see a long season in the IPL and if you have a number of different opinions and you have a loss here and there."

"Suddenly it becomes confusion and you have all moving pieces. You saw that with KKR in previous years, where they chopped and changed their top order, they didn't really know what their best combination was. Gambhir is being very clear in the dressing, he wants the team to go and he speaks like that as well," he further added.