Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batter Manish Pandey has lauded mentor Gautam Gambhir’s leadership qualities as they reunited for the 2024 IPL season. Pandey, however, played for KKR from 2014 to 2017 under Gambhir’s captaincy and enjoyed his best IPL seasons as well. Ever since, he has played for the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH), Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and the Delhi Capitals but failed to leave a mark. However, this time KKR bought him for his base price of ₹50 lakh.
In a conversation ahead of IPL 2024, Pandey opined on reuniting with Gambhir and was as quoted as saying by Cricbuzz: “Gauti Bhai has done wonders for KKR. We’ve always had a leader in him when he was playing, and now coming back as a mentor is kind of the same feeling. I am really happy that he’s there and that he’s going to be taking a lot of important calls for the team and he has done really well here as well.”
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“Happy to reunite with him, and the kind of josh [excitement] the boys are in with him and the way he speaks.. it felt like home again, felt like a lot of memories coming back. It’ll be great that with everybody coming in, it’ll be lovely to have the trophy here by the end of IPL,” he further added.
However, in his final season with KKR in 2017, Pandey enjoyed arguably his most rewarding time with the bat, scoring 396 runs which came at an average of almost 50 in 14 games. Meanwhile, Gambhir was LSG’s mentor in 2022 and 2023 before returning to KKR to perform a similar role in the upcoming season as well. And, Manish Pandey expressed happiness at returning to the KKR setup after six years as well.
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“Coming back after six years… 2017 was the last time we played. Coming back to KKR feels really good, feels like home. Spent four years here so KKR as a franchise has given me a lot in terms of my career, and in return what we have given to KKR is also our utmost effort and a trophy. Obviously, it feels very good coming back home, and with Gauti bhai as mentor coming back is also very special because we have a great history before, we’ve won the IPL before. So it feels good,” concluded Manish Pandey.
