The thrill of the 16th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2023) has begun. However, the bad news is coming one after the other for Kolkata Knight Riders. KKR’s team has landed on the field this season without its regular captain Shreyas Iyer, and the responsibility of captaincy has already been handed over to Nitish Rana. Whether Iyer will be able to play a single match in the season or not is a big question. The Kolkata team, which is suffering from the pain of Iyer’s absence, has now suffered another setback.
Actually, the KKR team will not be able to get the facility of Bangladesh star player Shakib Al Hasan and opener Liton Das in the next few matches.
Shakib and Liton Das have been selected for the squad for the one-off Test against Ireland, which means that both these players, who are in excellent form, will not be seen in the next few matches of IPL 2023.
The one-off Test match between Bangladesh and Ireland is scheduled to begin on 4th April. That is, Shakib and Liton Das will remain in Bangladesh till at least 8th April, and only after that will they be able to reach to participate in this league. It was believed that Shakib and Liton Das would not be included in the Test team and would be available for KKR from the first match itself.
The performance of Shakib and Liton Das in the T20 International series played against Ireland was unmatched. Liton Das holds the record for the fastest fifty for Bangladesh. At the same time, Shakib rocked both the bat and the ball. This is the reason why the team of Kolkata Knight Riders is eagerly waiting for these two players.
KKR: Nitish Rana (captain), N Jagadishan, Rinku Singh, Mandeep Singh, Liton Das, Rahmanullah Gurbaj, Andre Russell, David Wiese, Anukul Roy, Shardul Thakur, Lockie Ferguson, Venkatesh Iyer, Shakib Al Hasan, Sunil Narine, Umesh Yadav, Tim Southee, Vaibhav Arora, Kulwant Khejroliya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Varun Chakraborty, Shreyas Iyer (need approval from NCA).
