Not Shakib, Nitish Rana named captain of Kolkala Knight Riders for this season's IPL

To the surprise of many, Nitish Rana has been named as the captain of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for this season's Indian Premier League (IPL).

With the likes of Bangladesh's ace all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan in the KKR team, many expected him to be named captain.

The team owned by Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan also have other foreign captaincy candidates in all-rounders Andre Russell and Sunil Narine who are considered legends of the team but the Windies duo were snubbed.

Shreyas Iyer was named as the captain earlier but KKR revealed that Iyer is recovering from the back injury he suffered during the India-Australia Test series and expressed hope that he will take part in the season at some point.

"While we are hopeful that Shreyas will recover and participate at some stage in the IPL 2023 edition, we feel fortunate that Nitish, with the captaincy experience of having led his state side in white-ball cricket and the IPL experience he has had with KKR since 2018, will do a great job," KKR said in a statement.

"We are also confident that under head coach Chandrakant Pandit and the support staff, he will get all the support needed off the field, and the highly experienced leaders in the squad will provide all support that Nitish may need on the field. We wish him the best in his new role and Shreyas a full and speedy recovery," they added.

The announcement on social media did not go down well with fans as at the time of writing, the announcement post has over 84,000 reactions and the majority (over 40,000) of them are 'haha' reactions. 

One of the reasons for KKR's decision to not pick Shakib as the captain could be him being unavailable for the beginning and end of the IPL due to national team commitments with Bangladesh.