KKR’s lack of consistency concerns Jacques Kallis

NEW DELHI: Kolkata Knight Riders’ chief coach Jacques Kallis is optimistic that his team will make it to the top four of IPL 2018, but the former South African allrounder is also concerned with the lack of consistency in the tournament so far.


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After winning their first game against RCB,

KKR

lost the next two to CSK and SRH before claiming victories against Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals. Their two-match winning streak was ended by KXIP and they endured another loss to Delhi. They got back on track with wins over CSK and RCB, but back-to-back fixtures against Mumbai Indians led to two losses.

Writing in his column for TOI, the 42-year-old stressed that the team’s destiny is still in their hands. “Are we still in charge of our own destiny?” The answer, fortunately, is “yes we are”. If we win our remaining two matches then we will finish in the top four.”

The Dinesh Karthik-led side lost two back-to-back matches to MI but revived their campaign by posting this season's highest total of 245/6 in an away match against KXIP. The win means that KKR's fate is hanging in the balance with two more games left in the round-robin league.

“The last few days have been a reflection of most of our tournament so far — some extremely good and some fairly poor. We’ve been threatening to string together a few wins right from the first match yet we still haven’t done it — now would be a very good time,” wrote Kallis.

“We simply had a poor performance against Mumbai, which can happen. We prepared well and the guys were in exactly the right frame of mind. Sometimes that can just happen, other times there are reasons for a disappointing game but Mumbai Indians played well on the day and we didn’t. As I seem to be saying after every second game, it’s not the defeat that matters — it’s how well you bounce back that counts. And it’s fair to say that the King’s XI match was one of the most emphatic of the whole tournament so far.”

KKR have been battling with injury concerns with star players Andre Russell and Chris Lynn not fully fit, but Kallis felt that every team faced the same issues. "We have a few injury concerns at the moment, but that’s normal for this stage of the competition — it is the same for most if not all of the teams. We had a few changes forced on us but we were all delighted with strength of our bench reserves,” he added.