Former Chennai Super Kings player Subramaniam Badrinath praised the Kolkata Knight Riders for their auction picks. After winning the championship in the 2024 season, KKR has had a disappointing 2025 season. While batting was an issue for the side, bowling, apart from Varun Chakarvarthy and Sunil Narine, others could not have had a similar impact as they had in the 2024 season. But in the 2026 auction, KKR has strengthened their bowling with the likes of Matheesha Pathirana and Mustafizur Rahman.
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“They’ve done really well at the auction. And Pathirana was at his best with Bravo in CSK. That might make a difference. The biggest positive for them is that they are the best bowling attack among the ten teams. They’ve some of the best T20 bowlers in the world,” said Badrinath on Star Sports.
“Maybe once they picked up Pathirana, they could have let go of Mustafizur and picked a batter instead, especially without Andre Russell. They could have gone for Sarfaraz Khan or some young Indian batter. Apart from that, definitely a great side, especially the bowling,” he stated.
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Badrinath also pointed out the batting weakness and said the middle-order of KKR is slightly vulnerable. “Their top order is also very strong with Cameron Green, Tim Seifert and Ajinkya Rahane. But they do have a slight issue in their middle order. They invested a bit too much in their bowling with almost 45-50 crore. Because of that, there is still a gap in the middle order. Rinku Singh will come as the finisher. But after Raghuvanshi, there is a slight concern in the middle order,” said Badrinath
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