Recently, the CEO of the Kolkata Knight Riders, Venky Mysore had announced that Nitish Rana would be the vice-captain of the side with the return of Shreyas Iyer into the side. Iyer had missed out the previous season due to injury which meant that Rana had to lead the KKR side.
Speaking to JioCinema, Rana shared his thoughts on becoming the captain in the 2023 season of the Indian Premier League for the KKR franchise. He said,” I had become a senior member of the side in the last 3-4 years. I had got a leadership role in this period. This was started by Baz (former KKR coach Brendon McCullum). He would always encourage me to think like a captain.”
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Under Nitish Rana’s captaincy, KKR managed to finish at the seventh spot in the league table with 12 points and thereby were unable to qualify for the playoffs.
Rana also revealed some of the insights the former coach had shared with him on captaincy, he revealed,” He said it’s not important that you’d be controlling the game, it’s not important that I will listen to what you say. But you have to keep your brain active about what captaincy is all about. So that helped me a lot.”
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The interim captain managed to score 413 runs in the 2023 season where he batted at the number three position for KKR.
Nitish also revealed that he had spoken to the team management and the owners about his willingness to take up the role of captain in Iyer’s absence. He shared,” So, someone needed to step up. I went and spoke to coach Chandu Sir (Chandrakant Pandit), and CEO Venky Sir (Venky Mysore). I also spoke to Shah Rukh Sir (Shah Rukh Khan) that I am willing to take up the role.”
However, Rana also shared that the team had concerns regarding him being the captain, he revealed,” A lot of things were asked of me. I was told that the team didn’t want me to experience unnecessary pressure. I told them just one thing, that I enjoy pressure a lot and I play cricket for only these things. So these are the things that went in my favour and I got the captaincy.”
Rana has been part of the Uttar Pradesh team as well in the domestic circuit where notably he has been among the wickets regularly for the UP side.
KKR will look to bolster their squad as they aim to improve their side with better players as they aim to go for the title which they last won under the leadership of Gautam Gambhir back in 2014.
