Karthik has captained KKR in 37 IPL matches since 2018 season.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have Friday (October 16) stunned many with its sudden decision to hand over the captaincy to Eoin Morgan from Dinesh Karthik an hour before their IPL 2020 match against Mumbai Indians but not former Indian cricketer Deep Dasgupta.
After Karthik decided to step down as KKR captain citing “to focus on his batting and contributing more to the team's cause”, the franchise on Friday announced that Moran, England's World Cup-winning captain, will take over the reins in the remaining games of the ongoing IPL 2020.
The veteran wicketkeeper-batsman captained KKR in 37 IPL games (won 19) since taking the charge in 2018 and this season, he had led the team to 4 wins out of 7 matches so far in the IPL 13.
However, the two-time IPL champions are placed at the fourth place in the points table in the ongoing 13th edition of the T20 league even Karthik has also decent record as captain with the second-best win-percentage (52.70%) after Gautam Gambhir (57.43%), but there were still calls for Morgan to take over from him following the latter’s some of the poor decisions in the tournament.
Well, the KKR’s move wasn’t really much surprising for many including the commentator Dasgupta who claimed that it was already on the cards when the franchise picked Morgan at the auction last year.
Dasgupta told News Tak: “I felt this was on the cards as soon as KKR had picked up Morgan in the auction in 2019. Your inclined to think on these lines when you have a World Cup-winning captain in your team.”
However, former cricketer felt the KKR players might struggle to adapt to Morgan’s captaincy style since every captain has his own style but backed the Englishman to carry the team forward in IPL 2020.
He further explained, “KKR might fall apart or flourish after this decision. Team policies, strategies, and mentality changes when there is a change in leadership, especially in the middle of a season, because every captain is different. There might be a few players who might not be able to adapt to the way Morgan leads the team or can't relate to his style of captaincy.”
Dasgupta signed off by saying, “But at the same time, I think the way Morgan has led the England team in the past 2-3 years... I think he has the capability to handle unforeseen situations but it will be interesting to see how he leads this team.”