Gautam Gambhir Shares Reason Behind Kolkata Knight Riders Sudden Captaincy Change 

Just hours before Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) could lock horns with Mumbai Indians (MI) on Friday, fans were surprised to see that Dinesh Karthik stepped down as captain for Eoin Morgan to take his place. 

Initial reports stated that Kartik took this decision in order to focus on his own batting as his performance was low this IPL season.

Meanwhile, former KKR skipper Gautam Gambhir does not believe that this is the truth.

“Cricket is not about relationships, it’s about performances and honestly, I don’t think Morgan can change a lot of things. He could’ve changed a lot of things had he captained from the start of the tournament. No one changes during the middle of the tournament. It’s nice to have a good relationship between the coach and the captain,” Gambhir said on Star Sports.

“Li’ll surprised. He’s obviously leading KKR for the last 2 and a half years. You don’t do it in the middle of the season. KKR is not in that bad a position that someone needs to change a captain, so yeah little bit surprised,” he added.

Gambhir has been one of the most successful captains in the Knight Riders' history. Further giving his opinion on KKR's sudden change of captaincy, Gambhir feels that Morgan is a decorated skipper on the international circuit and he won't be able to make much of a difference. 

“If KKR wanted to make this change, they should have done it at the start of the competition. If you are talking so much about a World Cup-winning captain being there in your team puts pressure on someone like Dinesh Karthik then why not just give it to Morgan straightaway, why put so much pressure on Karthik? My point is, it sounds very good when someone says that I want to concentrate on my batting but the truth is, you start getting fillers from the management whether they are happy or not, so it’s very unfortunate,” Gambhir said.

However, Gambhir also refused to compare this with his decision to step down as the Delhi Daredevils captain in 2018.  

“My situation was very different to what DK’s situation is. I only captained Delhi for 7 games and DK is captaining KKR for the last two and a half years, so obviously, the CEO, the entire management know his style of captaincy. I went to DD with a very different mindset that I want to change the fortunes of Delhi but after it didn’t happen for seven games I felt the need to step down,” Gambhir said.

After 8 matches so far, Karthik has only scored 112 runs at an average of 14, with his highest being 58.