Tagging the city as their ‘second home,’ Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) bowling coach Bharat Arun served a gentle reminder to the official home side of the city — Rajasthan Royals — as both teams look to bounce back on Wednesday after losing their respective opening games of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025.

“Assam is our second home. Guwahati is a short distance from Kolkata, speaks the same language, and it’s a second home for us,” Arun told reporters at the pre-match press conference here on Tuesday.

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KKR, the defending champions were beaten by seven wickets by Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the tournament opener while the Royals were handed a 44-run drubbing by Sunrisers Hyderabad. However, Arun insisted that KKR isn’t dwelling too much on their initial defeat.

Reflecting on KKR’s narrow loss in their tournament opener, Arun said the team had drawn key takeaways despite the result.

“Actually, as a team, we are not too worried about the first game, it’s always good to win the first game. But there are a lot of positives from the first game, some lessons to be learnt from there. Yes we could have capitalised, we could have got more runs, we lost wickets towards the end of the innings. Whatever you do, there is always an opportunity to bowl better, we will learn from whatever happened in the last game and get better,” he said.

Arun also rallied behind key players like Andre Russell and Rinku Singh, after the duo had failed to make an impact in the tournament opener.

“Sports is about failing, you fail more often than you succeed. For a champion like (Andre) Russell, it must be playing on his mind that he failed in the last game, he’s out to prove it in every game, and we are also hoping that Russell would do well in this game.”

“He’s (Rinku Singh) been batting beautifully for us, he’s batted really well in the games leading up to the tournament, actually we are not too worried about his batting,” he added.

Pointing out at the competitive nature of the IPL, the former India bowling coach said that the team which manages to keep its cool in the crucial moments will have the last laugh.

“Every team is batting well, you can’t pick any team and say that’s doing better than the other team. Every team is evenly balanced in batting and bowling, a team that snatches those crucial moments at any given point of time is going to win,” he said.

As for conditions at the ACA Stadium in Guwahati, Arun said the team hadn’t taken a close look at the pitch yet, but was optimistic. “The wicket looks good. The outfield is excellent—we hope to get a good contest.”