Knight Riders needed a greenhorn to help them break the jinx against Mumbai Indians. Venkatesh Iyer proved to be just that. His maiden 50 in only his second IPL game saw KKR beat MI after two years on Thursday.
The commanding seven-wicket win put the Eoin Morgan-led side into the top-four of the points table.
The 26-year-old Madhya Pradesh player revealed his secret love for KKR long before he appeared on the cricketing horizon because of Sourav Ganguly.
“KKR was the first franchise that I wanted to be a part of only because dada (Sourav Ganguly) was the captain initially,” Iyer told teammate Rahul Tripathi in a video posted on the tournament website.
He even pointed out that the former India skipper has changed his batting completely.
“Dada has played a huge role in my batting, indirectly. I used to bat right-handed when I was very young but I wanted to exactly replicate dada...watching him the way he hit sixes, the way he batted, the way he bowled,” he added.
