On Sunday, the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) broke their losing streak against Mumbai Indians (MI) at the Eden Gardens to finally break their six-match losing streak in the ongoing IPL 2019. KKR have a  daunting target of 233 owing to some brilliant knocks from Shubman Gill (76), Chris Lynn (54) and Andre Russell (80*). Despite Hardik Pandya’s blistering knock of 91, MI lost the game by 34 runs and this win has kept KKR’s hopes alive to reach the playoffs.

Ahead of the game, Russell expressed the state of the players and environment in the team as he called the team atmosphere unhealthy in the pre-match press conference. There were also questions raised on captain Dinesh Karthik’s leadership abilities as well and it was clear that something is going wrong in the dressing room. 

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Karthik finally got a chance to respond to the all-rounder’s comments. As per the quotes in Times Now, Karthik said, “It’s a high-pressure sport, a high-octane tournament and you’ve got to make sure everybody’s in a great space, give them the best chance to do well and stay healthy. A lot of bickering and back-biting can go on in these sorts of situations. I’m very aware of it and make sure nothing like that happens.”

The KKR skipper seems to be having the information of the happenings in his team when the team was losing and was happy that they won finally. However, he added that his team is trying very hard and it is important to be smiling even in tough situations.

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Describing the same, Karthik further added, “You play the best that you can. You need to keep a smile. You need to be nice to others. Everybody’s trying hard. I always believe that at the end of the day it’s a game. We all go back home and we need to be happy. I think they need to make sure they have a great experience playing with me. It shouldn’t be all about, ‘oh that guy was so bad when we lost’. I was very aware of that.”