"Not a 220-250 wicket, I think 180-190 is a good score," remarked Rovman Powell as KKR finished at 181/4, despite being 98/1 at the halfway mark. Skipper Ajinkya Rahane reaffirmed that sentiment the result notwithstanding. In a game defined by fine margins, however, the three-time winners would reflect that they left a few runs, not for the first time post their 2024 title win.

KKR's title defence in 2025 had begun with a mixed run of three wins and as many defeats from the first six games. Among those was one against LSG at home when they stumbled from 149/2 after 12 overs to 201/7 after 18 to finish four runs short. And yet, they had a realistic shot to top the points table in their seventh outing, against the Punjab Kings - needing to chase 112 in 14.1 overs or fewer to take the pole position. Instead, they collapsed from 62/2 to 95 all-out, and their campaign derailed thereafter.

Those results and their three defeats in 2026 so far magnify one recurring theme - that of failure to maximise the middle-overs even after a flying start. They were 94/1 (RR: 13.43) after seven overs in their tournament opener against MI, but the next seven yielded just 56 (RR: 8). They remained in control of the required rate chasing 227 against SRH, but collapsed from 120/3 to 161 all-out within 31 balls. Against LSG, on Thursday, Overs 11-15 yielded 17/3, before a late flourish by Cameron Green and Rovman Powell propelled them to 181/4.

KKR's batting in first 15 overs in IPL 2026

*excludes NR vs PBKS

KKR batting in Overs 7-15 in the IPL since 2024

They topped each of the above five parameters among the 10 teams in 2024, and were worst on all of them in 2025. As for the ongoing edition, they rank 8th on run-rates and average runs per dismissal.

KKR's success in 2024 was defined by Phil Salt and Sunil Narine at the top, the two aggregating over 311 runs at a combined SR of 184 in the middle-phase when they batted deep. The mainstays in Overs 7-15 though were Shreyas Iyer (220 runs, SR: 140.12) and Venkatesh Iyer (199 runs, SR: 142.14), the former being dismissed just once in this phase.

Poor returns from their openers didn't help the cause in 2025, and Rahane, who has been their batting linchpin since, hasn't quite cracked the middle-overs code either. He has been averaging 72.87 while striking at 167.52 in the first six overs since 2023, which dips to 16.6 and 125.33 respectively in the middle-phase. His overall strike-rate against spin (121.95) as compared to pace (171.17) compounds it further, as it does for Rinku Singh (167.42 vs pace and 125.09 vs spin) in the timeframe. Rovman Powell has five dismissals in 57 balls against right-arm leg-spin in the IPL while striking at 92.98, a match-up often used against him in T20s.

The irony of it all is that after the first 15 matches of the competition, LSG - KKR's opponents on Thursday - have been the worst side on every parameter in Overs 7-15 in the tournament:

11 wickets lost at 18.63 | RR: 7.59 | Balls/dismissal: 14.7 | Dot-ball percentage: 32.9% | Boundary percentage: 14.11%.

The two teams had identical scores after the powerplay (56/1 and 56/2), while LSG managed 71/4 in contrast to the hosts' 59/3 in the middle phase. KKR seamers had bounced out the visitors' big-four - Mitchell Marsh, Aiden Markram, Rishabh Pant and Nicholas Pooran - by the 12th over, and Ayush Badoni's dismissal in the 15th almost meant curtains for a line-up which, on paper, is top-heavy. That was before a 21-year-old Mukul Choudhary decided to take the centre stage. KKR would concede that they were undone by a scarcely believable individual performance, but the game could've been closed out much earlier.