Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) allrounder Sunil Narine is "100% fit" for their next match in IPL 2025 against Mumbai Indians (MI) at the Wankhede Stadium on Monday. He had missed KKR's previous match, against Rajasthan Royals, because he was unwell and resumed training on Saturday evening after the team arrived in Mumbai from Guwahati.
Narine trained with the rest of the squad on Sunday as well, starting with a football game before bowling in the nets along with spinner Varun Chakravarthy.
"Sunil is 100% fit. He has definitely recovered well and he's been practising since yesterday," KKR head coach Chandrakant Pandit said on Sunday. "Today he is practising as well so he is absolutely fine at the moment."
ESPNcricinfo learned Narine was ill on the morning of KKR's previous game, which they won against RR, and was replaced by Moeen Ali as a spinner who also opened the innings.
Narine, it is understood, needed medical attention at the time but he returned to the team hotel in the evening and was a part of their celebrations.
"I've been practising well, and I just try to be ready all the time," Moeen said after the match about his unexpected season debut. "I got told this morning that Sunny [Narine] was not well and to just be ready whenever. Obviously, hard to replace Sunny but I felt like I did a nice job of it.
"You're just waiting for your turn and when the chance comes, you try and take it as much as you can. But on some wickets like today, I probably used my experience as much as I could to actually keep it simple, keep the stumps in play, keep the line to the left-handers in particular quite straight and just try and spin the ball."
Moeen did well with the ball, dismissing Yashasvi Jaiswal and Nitish Rana to finish with 2 for 23 from his four overs. He struggled with the bat though, scoring 5 in 12 balls.
Narine, an integral part of KKR since his first season in 2012, was one of their better performers in the opening-night loss to Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), at home in Kolkata. He scored 44 off 26 balls after an initial struggle to get going and then took 1 for 27 as KKR went down by seven wickets.