The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season has just begun, but the performance of defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) is not what everyone expected. After lifting the cup last season, KKR lost their mentor Gautam Gambhir as he became Team India's head coach, and later, they did not even retain their captain Shreyas Iyer.
The start of their IPL 2025 journey saw them lose to Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the opener, then secure a win against Rajasthan Royals (RR), but now suffer a crushing defeat against Mumbai Indians (MI). This loss saw them slip all the way to the bottom of the IPL 2025 points table.
They lost by 7 wickets against RCB, won by 8 wickets against RR, and now lost by 8 wickets against MI. With two losses and one win, KKR has a Net Run Rate (NRR) of -1.428 after three games which has pushed them to the 10th spot on the IPL 2025 points table.
After the loss to MI, KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane said, "Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket to bat on, as I mentioned at the toss. 180-190 would have been good on this wicket. It had very good bounce. Sometimes you have to use the pace and bounce. We need to learn really fast from this game. We couldn't do much with the ball. They tried their best, but there weren＊t enough runs on the board. We kept losing wickets〞four in the powerplay. It was difficult to consolidate and put up a total. You need that partnership going. You need one batsman to stay till the end."
Seeing the defending champions sitting at the 10th spot left fans frustrated and in shock. Many took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to express their disbelief.?
One wrote, "If secondhand embarrassment had a face, it would be mine watching this match. Defending champions my a**."
Another said, "This loss is more humiliating for KKR than SRK's ban from Wankhede Stadium."
One added, "Can't believe the defending champions, KKR, are sitting at 10th in the points table."
Another wrote, "Absolutely shameful, we＊re the defending champions and still at the bottom of the points table."
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock(w), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Ajinkya Rahane(c), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Spencer Johnson, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy?
Impact Subs: Anrich Nortje, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Luvnith Sisodia?
Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Ryan Rickelton(w), Will Jacks, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya(c), Naman Dhir, Mitchell Santner, Deepak Chahar, Trent Boult, Ashwani Kumar, Vignesh Puthur
Impact Subs: Rohit Sharma, Corbin Bosch, Raj Bawa, Robin Minz, Satyanarayana Raju
To stay updated on the stories that are going viral, follow?Indiatimes Trending.