IPL 2019: 3 key overseas players for Kolkata Knight Riders
Kolkata Knight Riders are one of the most successful teams in the IPL. They won the IPL title in 2012 and 2014 and finished in the third position last year.
KKR’s players have won 1 orange cap, 3 Most Valuable Player awards, and 1 Emerging Player of the Year accolade till date. The leading run-scorer of the side is Gautam Gambhir, while the leading wicket-taker is Sunil Narine.
KKR made a few astute buys in this year’s auction, signing the likes of Carlos Brathwaite, Lockie Ferguson, Joe Denly and Anrich Nortje. They retained most of their key players as well, including Robin Uthappa, Dinesh Karthik, Chris Lynn, Piyush Chawla, Nitish Rana and Kuldeep Yadav.
This year, the team will be captained by Dinesh Karthik and they will get their campaign underway against last year's runners-up, the Sunrisers Hyderabad, on March 24 at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
On that note, here’s a look at 3 key overseas players for KKR in this edition of IPL.
#1 Lockie Ferguson
27-year-old Lockie Ferguson is a pace bowler from New Zealand. He made his ODI debut over two years ago, in December 2016 against Australia. In January 2017 he made his T20I debut against Bangladesh, taking two wickets in his first two deliveries.
However, Ferguson truly caught everyone's eye when he picked 6 wickets from 2 matches in the ODI series against Sri Lanka following which he picked 11 wickets from 3 matches in the ODI series against Pakistan.
Till date, Ferguson has 46 wickets from 27 ODIs and 10 wickets from 5 T20Is.
He seems to be in a decent vein of form, having picked 5 wickets from 3 matches in the recent series against Bangladesh.
He entered the IPL auction with a base price of 1 crore and Kolkata Knight Riders bought him for 1.60 crores. Known for his deadly bouncers bowled at quite a significant pace, it will be interesting to see how Ferguson performs in Indian conditions.