Former Australia all-rounder and Kolkata Knight Riders assistant coach Shane Watson recently left stunned by the level of preparation by KKR head coach Abhishek Nayar for the IPL 2026 auction that concluded in Abu Dhabi and lavished praised on the Mumbaikar’s depth of knowledge about every player in the world.
Knight Riders made a big splash in the IPL mini auction in Abu Dhabi when they snapped up the highly-sought after Cameron Green for a whopping Rs 25.20 crore. The three-time champions, who last won the title in 2024 also snapped up New Zealand’s Finn Allen for Rs 2 crore and express pacer Matheesha Pathirana for Rs 18 crore. The Knights also signed up a bunch of unheralded unacapped talent, involving a mixture of strengths.
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Watson commended Nayar’s impressive scouting range and said: “I’ll say this straight away, I think Abhishek Nayar knows just about every cricketer on the planet. His understanding of Indian domestic players, their stats, where they’re at, what they’ve been doing recently, the depth of his intel – it’s extraordinary. I’m not sure I’ve come across anyone with that level of knowledge across Indian cricket.”
“Going into the auction, I had complete confidence that even if we missed out on any domestic player we were targeting, Abhishek would already have had two or three alternatives lined up, with clear insight into their strengths. He was regularly sending me videos, breaking down each player’s performances across every possible scenario. That level of preparation gave us enormous confidence.
“Leaning on Abhishek’s intel, we knew things were going to work out well for us in the auction. When you have someone like Abhishek leading that process, you know you’re always going to build a squad filled with some serious domestic talent and quality,” Watson added.
Kolkata Knight Riders Full IPL 2026 squad: Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Rovman Powell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Umran Malik, Cameron Green, Finn Allen, Matheesha Pathirana, Tejasvi Singh, Kartik Tyagi, Prashant Solanki, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert, Mustafizur Rahman, Sarthak Ranjan, Daksh Kamra, Rachin Ravindra, Akash Deep