Former Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) opening batter Phil Salt has revealed that the then mentor Gautam Gambhir played a crucial role in propelling the Kolkata-based franchise to a title victory, under Shreyas Iyer’s leadership.
Speaking in an exclusive interaction on the Super Over Podcast, Salt strolled down memory lane to recall how Gambhir played a pivotal role in letting Sunil Narine open with Salt for the overall IPL 2024 season and it paid rich dividends for the team.
“When I was with KKR and opened the batting with Sunil Narine for the entire season, it was Gambhir’s plan and he had the right idea. And he made it completely certain that everybody knew the road that we are going down and that the partnership won’t click everytime. But when it does happen, we win,” Phil Salt told on the Super Over Podcast.
It was a perfect move by Gambhir as Salt managed to score 435 runs at a strike rate of 182, while Sunil Narine accumulated 488 runs at a strike rate of over 180. Moreover, Narine was adjudged the Most Valuable Player of the season. With the ball, he took 17 wickets.
“Gambhir must have sat in Sunny’s (Narine) room for hours, trying to convince him to open because Sunny didn’t want to open at first. But he came around to the idea and he became the MVP by a long way that year. The distance between Narine and myself in the MVP race, and we were 1 and 2 mid-competition, was the same as the distance between myself and MS Dhoni at 82,” he added.
“Sunny (Narine) just changed the whole competition for KKR and it was GG that drove it. He let everybody know what we were doing and how we were going to do it,” Salt concluded.
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