IPL 2019: Rating the Best Possible Opening Combinations of all the 8 IPL Teams

#6 Kolkata Knight Riders

Chris Lynn has been KKR's batting mainstay for a couple of seasons

Possible Openers:

1. Chris Lynn
2. Sunil Narine
3. Robin Uthappa
4. Joe Denly
5. Shubman Gill

Kolkata Knight Riders will be expected to continue with their flamboyant opening pair of Sunil Narine and Chris Lynn with Robin Uthappa or Shubman Gill as the backup. Sunil Narine had found a new dimension to his game while opening the innings for KKR in the previous editions of IPL and was getting KKR some quick runs in the power play.

While Narine was effective against spin bowling, Chris Lynn enjoyed pace bowling. Their combination was a success and KKR will not try to bother that much.

But with Chris Lynn expected to depart in the later stages of IPL 2019, there will be a void in their opening slot. Most probably Robin Uthappa will open with Narine at that stage with middle order comprising of Nitish Rana, Shubman Gill, Dinesh Karthik and Rinku Singh to follow.

KKR might also look into the possibility of bringing Joe Denly as a straight swap for Chris Lynn as the opening partner for Narine. In that case, it remains to be seen, how well Denly adapts to the subcontinent pitches.

Overall Verdict - Opening Combination of Lynn–Narine is very dangerous. But similar to Rajasthan, the risk of losing their aggressor midway reduces the rating a bit.

Rating: 3.5 /5