Nitish Rana named KKR captain in Shreyas Iyer's absence

Nitish Rana has been named Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) captain, the franchise has announced, while remaining hopeful that their regular captain Shreyas Iyer will return at some point. Shreyas is currently recovering from a back injury, which recurred during the Test series against Australia. 

"Kolkata Knight Riders today announced that Nitish Rana would captain the side in the absence of Shreyas Iyer, who is recovering from a back injury," a statement from KKR read.

"While we are hopeful that Shreyas will recover and participate at some stage in the IPL 2023 edition, we feel fortunate that Nitish, with the captaincy experience having led his state side in white ball cricket and the IPL experience he has had with KKR since 2018, will do a great job.

"We are also confident that under Head Coach Chandrakant Pandit and the support staff, he will get all the support needed off the field, and the highly experienced leaders in the squad will provide all support that Nitish may need on the field. We wish him the best in his new role and Shreyas a full and speedy recovery."

The two-time champions secured Rana's services in 2018, buying him for INR 3.4 crore from a base price of INR 20 lakh. He has scored 1,744 runs for KKR at 27.68, strike-rate of 135.61 in 70 innings, which includes 11 fifties. He has previously represented Mumbai Indians (MI) as well, scoring 437 runs at 31.21 for them.

He also led Delhi in 12 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy matches, winning eight of them. Rana will lead the team amidst a complete overhaul of the backroom staff that includes Chandrakant Pandit as the head coach, while Bharat Arun was appointed bowling coach.

Rana finished IPL 2022 as the second-highest run-getter for his side with 361 runs at 27.76 to go with a strike-rate of 143.82 as KKR finished seventh in the table with 12 points from 14 matches.

He has also played one One-Day International (ODI) and a couple of T20 Internationals (T20I) for India - all against Sri Lanka in 2021.