Maybe Shreyas Iyer is not happy with Brendon McCullum's decisions: Nikhil Chopra

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have only five wins in 12 league matches and are at seventh position in the IPL 2022 points table. The team management has involved close to 20 players in their campaign, which depicts instability. Although they won their last league match against Mumbai Indians (MI), Knight Riders made five changes to their playing XI. In the post-match conference, captain Shreyas Iyer revealed that the CEO Venky Mysore is also involved in the team’s selections. Former Indian cricketers Nikhil Chopra and Wasim Jaffer shared their views on the same.

Chopra thinks the captain should be the sole decision-maker in the game of cricket, as opposed to football, where the team is run by a coach. He mentioned that the past India captains, Sourav Ganguly and Mohammad Azharuddin had the full freedom to pick their players and the team responded well under their leadership. The former batter thinks this statement has come from Iyer due to him being not happy with the decisions of head coach Brendon McCullum.

“In football, the team is run by the managers or the coach. In cricket, only the captain is at the helm of every decision. If KKR doesn’t qualify, will McCulum lose his place or you will remove Iyer as captain? If you look at this history, Ganguly and Azharuddin picked players of their choice, because they would be giving them specific roles to perform for the team. I think this statement has come due to the fact that think Iyer was not happy with the coach’s decisions,” said Chopra on Sky247.net presents ‘Not Just Cricket’ Show on CricTracker.

Teams can only do well when the captain and coach are on the same page: Wasim Jaffer

Jaffer reckoned that it is very crucial for the coach and captain to be on the same page in the international cricket or IPL, in order to have a successful campaign. He shared an example of a successful partnership in the form of Virat Kohli with Ravi Shastri, and MS Dhoni with Gary Kirsten. Jaffer recalled his experience with Punjab Kings in the previous editions of IPL and admitted that the owners and CEOs are involved in the team selections.

“Whether it’s the national team or the IPL, the captain and coach need to be on the same page, otherwise the differences keep growing. We have seen Virat and Ravi Shastri, and Dhoni with Gary Kirsten. In one of the fixtures, it was seen that Shreyas expressed displeasure over the decision made by the coach, which shows everything is not controlled by him. Obviously, owners and CEOs are involved in the team selections of the franchise cricket,” said Jaffer.