Ajinkya Rahane's Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) finished eight on the points table after their loss to SRH in their last league game of IPL 2025. This also meant that KKR are no longer the defending champions of IP 2025.
SRH scored a mammoth 278 runs for three wickets on the back of an unbeaten ton from Heinrich Klaasen. The South African scored 105 runs off 39 deliveries with seven fours and nine sixes at a strike rate of over 250.
Meanwhile, KKR chasing the record total was bowled out for 168 runs with none of their batters crossing the 50-mark. Rahane scored 15 runs off 8 deliveries in his last innings of the season. Andre Russell was dismissed for a duck. Manish Pandey scored 37 runs off 23 deliveries in an otherwise disappointing batting performance from KKR. They managed to win just six games this season, losing eight in the process.
Speaking after the game, KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane said that it was a collective batting failure from the KKR batters this season.
It's just that for us as a team, three-four guys were out of form. Where we faltered was at the batting end. As a batting unit, collectively, we couldn't do well," Rahane said during the post-match media interaction.
"Unfortunately, two-three players were going through that phase for us. And that was the reason we couldn't do well...But again, they are pretty much experienced enough to handle this situation.
KKR's big three Russell, Rinku and Ramandeep did not have a good season unlike last year when they were key behind KKR's big finishes. Russell averaged 18.55, Rinku 29.42 and Ramandeep less than 10 this season. KKR's record signing Venkatesh Iyer averaged just 20.28 this season.
"I'm sure they will come back stronger next year...Rinku (Singh), Raman (Ramandeep Singh), all the players, they will learn from the mistakes and come back stronger" Rahane said.
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We Will Come Back Stronger - Rahane
Rahane concluded by saying that had the results of a few games gone in their favour, the season could have been different for them. He finished the season with 390 runs, the most for KKR. Varun Chakravarthy and Vaibhav Arora finished with 17 wickets, the most for KKR. Harshit Rana took 15 and Sunil Narine took 12 wickets besides scoring 246 runs this season.
