Kochi Tuskers Kerala joined the bandwagon of IPL in the 2010-11 season alongside the likes of Pune Warriors. Their maiden season in the glittering domestic extravaganza kicked off in 2011. Pune Warriors managed to thrive upon its rebranding and extend its infamous residence in the tournament for three years while Kochi Tuskers Kerala could only manage to feature in one season.
Despite the failure of Tuskers in the solitary season that they were a part of, the team managed to grab big monikers of the sport in the form of Brendon McCullum, Mahela Jayawardene, VVS Laxman, Steve Smith, Parthiv Patel, RP Singh, Ravindra Jadeja, Muttiah Muralitharan, and several other illustrious ones. However, given the clash of stars in a star-studded sky, the team couldn’t find themselves doing well and had to be content with spasmodic bursts of individual brilliance.
KTK is the solitary team against which the Little Master of India, Sachin Tendulkar blasted an imperious century while KTK bowler Prasanth Parameswaran was taken to the cleaners as he conceded 37 runs in a single over.
We will take a look at four players who spent their IPL career in Kochi Tuskers Kerala and with the dissolution of the franchise, the sun came down on the IPL career of these players as well.
Michael Klinger:
Labeled as the unluckiest batsman of the last two decades, Michael Klinger featured for the Orange and Blue army in IPL. He was believed to be bestowed with unfathomable talents and was deemed as the vanguard of the future Australian batters.
Despite his stellar performances in CLT20, none of the franchises showed any interest in him and that is when Kochi Tuskers bought him. Haplessly, all he could manage from 4 games were 73 runs at a sloppy strike rate of 94.81.
Steve O’Keefe
Steve O’ Keefe grabbed the limelight after he posted a sensational shift against India that saw him claiming 12 wickets in a Test match and also resulted in a punishing defeat for the Indians by a humiliating margin of 333 runs.
However, before he broke through the ranks of Test cricket, he was onboarded by Kochi Tuskers Kerala. Unfortunately, he couldn’t bag a solitary game and that was the last time that IPL saw him.
Deepak Chougule
Uncapped Indian wunderkind, Deepak Chougule did display some scintillating strokeplay in domestic cricket that left the selectors of Kochi Tuskers flabbergasted. They decided to welcome the lad to their ranks and the youngster had his big breakthrough in 2011.
However, despite showing promise with the bat in the domestic arena, he couldn’t get himself through the ranks of the team given the dominance of big names. The 36-year old batsman played for Bijapur Bulls in Karnataka Premier League.
Gnaneswara Rao
Brother of Indian international, Venugopal Rao, had made his IPL debut with Kochi Tuskers Kerala in 2011. The batting all-rounder made his debut against Rajasthan Royals. He also played a game against Chennai Super Kings before his IPL career came to an abrupt end.
In the two games that he went on to play, he could only amass 19 runs and bowled one over that gave away 7 runs, which is pretty economical in the terms of T20 cricket.
