Focus On Sunil Narine's Place In Eleven As KKR Face-Off Punjab Kings At Home

A 'Go To' man in Kolkata Knight Riders for more than a decade, Sunil Narine will have to play out of his skin to justify his place in the playing eleven when his team face Punjab Kings in a must-win Indian Premier League game, at the Eden Gardens on Monday. The Trinidad man, who has played 158 games spread across 12 seasons, including the current one, has 159 wickets along with 1039 runs with four half-centuries after he worked on his batting once his action was deemed suspect and he lost fizz of the pitch.

Narine hasn't been the same "mystery bowler", who burst into the T20 franchise scene, for many seasons but he would be first one to admit he has been insanely lucky.

The architect of 2012 and 2014 IPL wins with 24 and 21 wickets those two seasons, has struggled for at leats last two of his last three seasons but KKR management (the principal decision makers CEO Venky Mysore and assistant coach Abhishek Nayar) has stuck with him.

However with KKR staring at another round robin exit with only four wins in 10 games, there is no room for error in next four games.

The question is whether KKR can still afford to still play the man, who only has seven scalps from 10 games with an economy rate of 8.76 and aggregate of 14 runs from 8 batting innings with a strike-rate of less than 80.

While KKR does need to take some tough selection calls, Punjab Kings is also in a spot of bother and the match is of equal importance for them.

Having been out-batted by Mumbai Indians in their last outing, the Shikhar Dhawan-led side may be a spot ahead of the eighth-placed KKR with a two-point lead but both the teams are staring at elimination.

More so in the case of the Nitish Rana-captained home side who face a do-or-die situation in their