2012 Kolkata Knight Riders season

Template:Infobox cricket club season

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) is a franchise cricket team based in Kolkata, India, which plays in the Indian Premier League (IPL). They were one of the nine teams that competed in the 2012 IPL. They were captained by Gautam Gambhir. Kolkata Knight Riders emerged as winners of the 2012 IPL and qualified for the Champions League T20.

Background

Due to the disbanding of Kochi Tuskers Kerala, each team played the remaining eight teams twice, once at home and once away. Therefore, each team played 16 matches. KKR bought back Brendon McCullum for $900,000 and West Indies Sunil Narine for $700,000. They also bought South-African Marchant de Lange for $50,000. The team replaced coach Dav Whatmore by Trevor Bayliss. Kolkata Knight Riders also launched a new marketing campaign titled "New Dawn. New Knights" and a new logo.

KKR got off to a poor start in the tournament, losing their first two games against Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals. However, they fought back with consecutive wins over Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals. In the next match, however, they messed up an easy chase against Kings XI Punjab, losing narrowly by 2 runs. KKR's West Indian spinner Sunil Narine took the only five-wicket haul of the tournament (5–19) in that match and despite his team losing, he was declared as the Man of The Match. KKR then went on to win six matches in a row (except for a washed-out match against Deccan Chargers). However, the team's performances dipped in the following two matches, losing against Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. Eventually the team had a timely return to form, when they beat Mumbai Indians and Pune Warriors India in successive away matches, with the team bowling economically to defend average totals. This earned a second-place finish for the team at the end of the league stage and a semi-final match against Delhi Daredevils. An all-round performance from them saw Delhi being defeated by 18 runs, and KKR also qualifying for their maiden IPL final.

The final between the Knight Riders and the defending two-time champions Chennai Super Kings was held at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium. A hamstring injury to Lakshmipathy Balaji resulted in the inclusion of Brett Lee and due to him being a foreign player, the team was required to leave out their wicket-keeper batsman Brendon McCullum to maintain the cap of 4 foreign players. Manvinder Bisla was brought in to replace McCullum. The team eventually won the match with the help of some impressive batting performance by Bisla (89 from 48 balls) and Jacques Kallis (69 from 49 balls) to become the champions of the tournament for the first time. Manvinder Bisla was declared Man of the Match and Sunil Narine was named Man of the Series.

Sunil Narine was the second-highest wicket-taker as well as player of the tournament, and also had the best economy rate in the tournament. The batting was led by skipper Gautam Gambhir, who was the second-highest run-getter of the tournament and scored 6 half-centuries out of a total of 11 from his team.

The state of West Bengal set up a grand felicitation involving Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee and Governor of West Bengal M K Narayanan . The Cricket Association of Bengal gifted the 17 members of the team with gold chain each and mementos. A victory parade for the team members was also organized on 28 May beginning from Hazra, Writers' Building to the Eden Garden stadium where ten thousand spectators came to cheer for the team during a one-hour celebration that was compared to the India's World Cup victory lap at the Wankhede in Mumbai the year before. However, the celebration received criticism from media and certain political parties and had been ridiculed by some pools of society as it had only been organized for a club team. Shahrukh Khan, the team's co-owner and the state's brand ambassador, defended the decision."

Champions League Twenty20

KKR's maiden IPL victory in 2012 meant that they would now participate in the 2012 Champions League Twenty20 which was held in South Africa. They were in Group A along with Delhi Daredevils, Perth Scorchers, Auckland Aces and Titans. But disappointingly, they were eliminated in the group stage itself, winning only one game against the Titans, which they did so with a record breaking 99 run margin. This was the highest victory margin ever recorded in the CLT20 tournament. Losses to Delhi Daredevils and Auckland Aces followed by a washed out game against Perth meant that KKR finished 3rd in Group A and failed to qualify for the knock out stages of the tournament.

Squad

Players with international caps prior to the 2012 season are listed in bold.

No.	Name	Nationality	Birth date	Batting Style	Bowling Style	Notes
Batters
03	Gautam Gambhir	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Right-arm leg break	Captain
09	Manoj Tiwary	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm leg break
16	Eoin Morgan	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Right-arm medium	Overseas
63	Debabrata Das	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm leg break
All-rounders
03	Jacques Kallis	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium-fast	Vice-captain
06	Laxmi Ratan Shukla	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium
22	Rajat Bhatia	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium-fast
27	Ryan ten Doeschate	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right arm medium-fast	Overseas
28	Yusuf Pathan	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm off break
75	Shakib Al Hasan	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Slow left arm orthodox	Overseas
–	Chirag Jani	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium
Wicket-keepers
24	Brad Haddin	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	–	Overseas
36	Manvinder Bisla	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	–
36	Brendon McCullum	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium	Overseas
–	Sanju Samson	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	–
Bowlers
04	James Pattinson	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Right-arm fast-medium	Overseas
08	Pradeep Sangwan	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Left-arm medium-fast
14	Shami Ahmed	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm medium-fast
21	Iqbal Abdulla	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Slow left arm orthodox
55	Lakshmipathy Balaji	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right arm medium-fast
58	Brett Lee	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm fast	Overseas
74	Sunil Narine	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Left-handed	Right-arm off break	Overseas
90	Marchant de Lange	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm fast	Overseas
99	Jaydev Unadkat	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Left-arm medium-fast
–	Iresh Saxena	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Slow left arm orthodox
–	Sarabjit Ladda	Template:Cr	Template:Birth date and age2	Right-handed	Right-arm leg break

Indian Premier League

Season standings

Kolkata Knight Riders finished runners-up in the league stage of IPL 2012. ("C" refers to the "Champions" of the Tournament. 'R'(2nd Position), '3' and '4' are the positions of the respective teams in the tournament.)

Match log

No.	Date	Opponent	Venue	Result	Scorecard
1	5 April	Delhi Daredevils	Kolkata	Lost by 8 wickets	Score Card
2	8 April	Rajasthan Royals	Jaipur	Lost by 22 runs	Score Card
3	10 April	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Bengaluru	Won by 42 runs, MoM – Lakshmipathy Balaji 4/18	Score Card
4	13 April	Rajasthan Royals	Kolkata	Won by 5 wickets, MoM – Shakib Al Hasan 3/17 & 16 (10)	Score Card
5	15 April	Kings XI Punjab	Kolkata	Lost by 2 runs, MoM – Sunil Narine 5/19	Score Card
6	18 April	Kings XI Punjab	Mohali	Won by 8 wickets, MoM – Gautam Gambhir 66* (44)	Score Card
7	22 April	Deccan Chargers	Cuttack	Won by 5 wickets,MoM – Brett Lee 1/15	Score Card
8	24 April	Deccan Chargers	Kolkata	Match Abandoned without a ball bowled	Scorecard
9	28 April	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Kolkata	Won by 47 runs,MoM – Gautam Gambhir 93 (51)	Score Card
10	30 April	Chennai Super Kings	Chennai	Won by 5 wickets, MoM- Gautam Gambhir 63(52)	Score Card
11	5 May	Pune Warriors India	Kolkata	Won by 7 runs, MoM – Sunil Narine 1/13	Score Card
12	7 May	Delhi Daredevils	New Delhi	Won by 6 wickets, MoM – Jacques Kallis 2/20,30 (27)	Score Card
13	12 May	Mumbai Indians	Kolkata	Lost by 27 runs	Score Card
14	14 May	Chennai Super Kings	Kolkata	Lost by 5 wickets	Score Card
15	16 May	Mumbai Indians	Mumbai	Won by 32 runs, MoM – Sunil Narine 4/15	Score Card
16	19 May	Pune Warriors India	Pune	Won by 34 runs, MoM – Shakib Al Hasan 42 (30) & 2/18	Score Card
17	22 May	Delhi Daredevils (Qualifier 1)	Pune	Won by 18 runs, MoM – Yusuf Pathan 40* (21)	Score Card
18	27 May	Chennai Super Kings (Final)	Chennai	won by 5 wickets, MoM – Manvinder Bisla 89 (48)	Score Card
Overall record: 12–5. Champions. Qualified for 2012 Champions League Twenty20

Champions League Twenty20

Match log

No.	Date	Opponent	Venue	Result	Match Scorecard
1	13 October	Delhi Daredevils	Centurion	Lost by 52 runs	Scorecard
2	15 October	Auckland Aces	Cape Town	Lost by 7 wickets	Scorecard
3	17 October	Perth Scorchers	Durban	Match abandoned due to rain	Scorecard
4	21 October	Titans	Cape Town	Won by 99 runs, MoM – Debabrata Das – 43* (19)	Scorecard
Overall record: 1–2. Failed to advance.