Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will have a new coach in Abhishek Nayar at the helm for the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2026). For Nayar, who has already served as the assistant coach for KKR and the Indian team, it will be his second head coach role in Indian franchise cricket after recently donning a similar designation for the UP Warriorz (UPW) in the Women’s Premier League (WPL 2026).
Having failed to qualify for the playoffs for the last two seasons, UPW hoped for a change of fortunes under the new coaching leadership. While Nayar managed to build a formidable squad, the results failed to reflect that as UPW’s wait for their maiden trophy got extended further.
Now that Abhishek Nayar is set to take over the responsibilities at KKR next, let’s check some of the factors that give an insight into how the UPW season can be a teaser for KKR in IPL 2026.
Both UPW and KKR did a squad overhaul. While it’s understandable that Nayar wants to build a system with players according to his philosophy and that it was the first-ever mega auction at WPL, he employed a similar approach with KKR too during the IPL 2026 auction. Despite a mini auction, KKR released a staggering 10 players including key names like Andre Russell, Venkatesh Iyer. At UPW too, they released their star player Deepti Sharma but fortunately enough, managed to buy her back.
The biggest drawback of doing a significant overhaul is that it offers limited time to gel the squad and find the correct combinations, especially if core members of a side are missing. It remains to be seen if Nayar’s tactics and his signings can help KKR combat the void left by their loyal custodians over the past years.
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Another tactic of Abhishek Nayar, which he tried at UPW and has also hinted will be applied at KKR, is changing the top-order combination. In WPL 2026, UPW tried three different opening pairs throughout the season. They started with Kiran Navgire and Meg Lanning before promoting Harleen Deol briefly and then again went back to Navgire. In the last two matches of the season, they dropped Navgire and pushed Deepti Sharma to open.
For IPL 2026 as well, Nayar has categorically mentioned that Sunil Narine will not open for KKR, one of the key architects with the bat during their third title win in IPL 2024. Not only that, Aussie all-rounder Cameron Green will also bat higher at No.3.
With the seasons being short and not much time available for experimentation, such changes can end up being costly from a qualification pov.
Another key observation from both UPW and KKR squads are having multiple players in similar roles, especially at the top. Like UPW had Meg Lanning, Kiran Navgire, Phoebe Litchfield, Harleen Deol, KKR also have Tim Seifert, Finn Allen, Ajinkya Rahane, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rahul Tripathi, all of whom are mostly top-order batters while the depth in middle-order comparatively runs thin.
Furthermore, there seems to be an over-reliance on overseas stars to score the bulk of the runs. Like Lanning and Litchfield at UPW, KKR will be extremely dependent on Finn Allen, Tim Seifert and Cameron Green to get the team off to a flying start. However, in case the plan backfires, given the team composition, KKR might find it an uphill task to get themselves out of a sticky spot.
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