The Kolkata Knight Riders were almost down and out of the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League before the Covid-19 crisis in their camp and subsequent outbreak in other camps led to the postponement of the tournament midway through.
They had won only two games out of the seven played till that point before the break “came at a really good time” for them. Their coach Brendon McCullum conceded that they were pushed against the wall before the break which allowed them some time to figure out the best way to go forward and “smooth out a couple of rough edges”.
"The break probably came at a really good time for us to be honest," McCullum said at the post-match press conference. "It can be hard in a tournament such as the IPL to be able to keep your composure when results are going against you. Where we sat after seven games, with only two wins, it was pretty disappointing. So the break came at a good time. During that time, we had some conversations right throughout the few months in between with some guys and just tried to smooth out a couple of rough edges.
At the start of the second leg of the tournament in the UAE, the Knight Riders need a bit of luck and a lot of sparks, especially from the batting unit to turn things around.
The spark came in the form of a dominating top order that lit up the stage with the emergence of players such as Venkatesh Iyer and established players at the IPL level coming back to their best. The opening pair of Shubman Gill and Iyer put the bowling attack of opposition under enormous pressure and the coach McCullum made reservations about the fact that it led to their turnaround in the second phase of the tournament. He commenced the quartet of Iyer, Gill, Nitish Rana and Rahul Tripathi for batting with all their guts and conceded his loss of words in their appreciation.
"I always felt that our intent needed to increase to be able to put pressure back on the opposition. I cannot talk highly enough of our top four Indian batters in particular for what they were able to achieve in the second half of the competition. It takes guts to play the way that they did and it takes courage to change the method and to trust the method that us as coaches were asking them to play, which was a more up-tempo game. But they were absolutely fantastic, and were such a massive reason why we were a huge chance in this competition, why we made it as well as what we had. So we've certainly got something to work with there, moving forward,” McCulumm conceded.
The Knight Riders suffered their first defeat in an IPL final after winning the first two games on the big stage. Their unbeatne record in the IPL final was tarnished by the Chennai Super Kings who were a better and more clinical side than them on the night of the final and throughout the tournament.