Kolkata Knight Riders mentor Gautam Gambhir has justified his franchise bidding for Mitchell Starc for a record-breaking quantity, saying that the Australia fast would be the X-factor and the chief of the bowling pack. KKR shelled out a jaw-dropping Rs 24.75 crore to get the providers of Starc within the IPL public sale in Dubai on Tuesday. “He (Starc) is an X-factor, there is no doubt about that. Someone who can bowl with the new ball, bowl in the death overs and more importantly, someone who can lead the attack,” Gambhir, who was current on the public sale, mentioned.

“He is going to be of massive help to our two domestic bowlers because both of them are very talented and you need someone to help them out in the middle and Starc covers those bases.

“It will not be solely about his bowling but additionally about main the assault and serving to all guys round him. So, someone should pay for it,” the former India opener told Jio Cinema.

Gambhir, who captained KKR to two IPL titles, said for him having a strong bowling line-up takes precedence over a strong batting line-up.

“We have loads of depth in our bowling line-up. We at all times wished to have a stronger bowling assault and now now we have the choices with Mujeeb (Ur Rahman), Gus (Atkinson), Sunil (Narine), Varun (Chakravarthy), and Mitchell Starc together with two Indian seamers (Harshit Rana and Suyash Sharma) and Chetan Sakariya.

“Now, we have enough options where we can play different combinations looking at the venue as well. For me, it has always been about having a strong bowling line-up compared to a very strong batting line-up,” mentioned the BJP Member of Parliament.

Asked about his coming again to the franchise he had led to titles in 2012 and 2014, Gambhir mentioned, “For me, KKR is not a team, it is an emotion. The reason is the amount of love that I have received from the people of Kolkata for seven years that I led them and, hopefully, I led them with a lot of honesty.

“Hopefully, we will recreate the identical recollections that we did in 2012 and 2014. There isn’t any assure that we’ll exit and win however there may be one assure for positive, that we’ll battle until the final drop of our blood.”