Kolkata Knight Riders entered Tuesday night’s IPL 2026 chase with a plan that looked bold on paper—Sunil Narine up top, a fresh angle, something to shake the routine. Then the chase hit that familiar wall: the kind you can feel creeping in, quiet at first, before it shows up as a scoreboard problem.
Finch’s blunt take on KKR’s chase
Aaron Finch didn’t try to dress it up after the Chennai Super Kings match.
“Certainly wasn’t pretty,” Finch said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show after the game.
“A lot of question marks about KKR, particularly in that run chase.
Some of their tactics were very questionable.
We praised the decision for Sunil Narine to go to the top of the order.
It didn’t come off today [24 in 17 balls], but it was something different.
At least they tried it.”
And then he kept going, because apparently that’s what you do when you’ve watched enough “nearly” and still don’t see “there.” Finch pointed at the way KKR’s batting together—Ajinkya Rahane and Angkrish Raghuvanshi’s 50 in 31 balls—never really turned into anything that forced the opposition captain into serious reshuffles.
“Their partnership wasn’t bad,” he said, “but there’s still no point of difference… They don’t take the bowling on.”
In the background, the same pressure seems to be building from multiple directions at once.
Their pace attack is depleted.
One of their two primary spinners is out of form.
Their batting, as Misryoum reporting notes, doesn’t seem to have the firepower either.
Finch’s critique is really just the loudest part of a bigger, messier theme.
The “price tags” argument and what KKR should do next
“I don’t think you ever pick a team on price tags,” Finch said.
“That would be really ignorant to do that.
Because buying at the auction is a supply and demand of a skill set that you bring.
It’s not about, well, we have to play this guy because we paid this much for him.” The auction logic doesn’t help if the skill set isn’t being used at its best angle.
And Finch argues Green is playing out of position.
Misryoum newsroom reported that Tim Southee, KKR’s bowling coach, offered the internal logic too: they’re trying different options at the top when you’re losing, and that “beauty of the IPL” is testing depth.
Southee said Narine’s success had opened possibilities and that KKR thought they’d try something different.
But even with that flexibility, the results haven’t come.
Finch’s alternative is pretty specific: try Tim Seifert.
“You’ve got Seifert sitting in the wings, he’s a specialist opener,” Finch said.
“Cameron Green hasn’t played a huge amount of T20 cricket [recently, because of injuries].
So you’ve got a guy there who brings a good skill set and really good form in Seifert… Who’s got the scoops, he’s got the ramps, he’s got a lot of different options.”
He even added a captain’s-eye view of what Seifert forces.
“He is a player that you have to do multiple stages of planning for…” Finch then landed on the practical point: if it hasn’t worked yet, it’s time to rejig.
“That’s not to say that it’s done and dusted for the tournament,” he said, “but I think that it gets to a point where you go, right, we need to rejig our side and rethink about how we’re structuring it up.”
On match day, there was that small real-world moment—somewhere in the crowd, you could hear the quick, sharp buzz of a reaction when a ball finally beat the bat, the kind that turns laughter into silence. The next question is whether KKR will actually listen to it.
KKR’s next game is on Friday, away in Ahmedabad against Gujarat Titans.
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