It was as clinical as it can get for the Knight Riders as they defeated Rajasthan Royals by a huge margin of 60 runs to give themselves a good enough chance to qualify for the Playoffs in the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League.
Eoin Morgan, the skipper led with an example as even after losing the toss, the Knight Riders put on more than just a competitive total of 191 runs on the board. If the batting was better than expected, then the bowling just raised itself above the level of any expectations, as another big-game player, Pat Cummins decided to turn this game on its head as he picked up four wickets in the powerplay to dismantle the RR innings altogether.
While all this was taking place, Dinesh Karthik, the former captain probably played the most crucial of the roles as he took a blinder to remove the danger man Ben Stokes after he got a flashy edge off a Cummins delivery.
There were certain flop performances as well, but they were mostly in the ranks of the Royals. On this note, let’s have a look at the Hits and Flops of the game.
After being hit for 19 in the first five balls of the first over, Pat Cummins made a strong comeback as he picked up the wicket of Robin Uthappa off the final delivery of his first over, and then on the first delivery of his next over, he removed the most precious of the Royals’ wickets, Ben Strokes. The credit for this wicket was however stolen of Dinesh Karthik and he rightly deserved it as well.
Cummins didn’t stop there as he went on to claim three more in his first spell, breaking the backbone of the Rajasthan innings. Finishing with the figures of 4/34 after conceding 19 in the first over is a phenomenal feat achieved by Cummins.
After shuffling across the batting order, the skipper finally found his place at number five. Having persisted with that number in the last few games, he eked out a mind-blowing performance in this game scoring 68 off just 35 balls at the strike rate of almost 195. More important than the number of runs was the situation in which he scored those runs.
He put together two handy partnerships with Andre Russell and Cummins of 45 and 40 each to push the score from 99-3 in the 13th over to 191 by the end of the 20th. His innings included five fours and six sixes. Captaincy wise too, the Englishman was spot on with his changes and field placements.
The captain Eoin Morgan, in his post-match interaction at the presentation ceremony praised Shivam Mavi saying that although it was Cummins who picked up most of the wickets, the diligence of Mavi must not be sidelined because he stuck to bowling the hard line of the good length which was discussed in the team meeting.
The Uttar Pradesh born indeed bowled the hard-line and got the crucial wicket of in-form Sanju Samson. Later on, the bowler was back to pick one more wicket of Kartik Tyagi in his last over. Mavi finished with impressive figures of 2/15 in his four overs, going at even less than four an over.
The Rajasthan captain has remained a flop throughout the tournament barring a few games. As told by Ashish Nehra during the live commentary of the match, Smith has looked to hit the bowl hard instead of timing it and that has led to his downfall this season. In the last 10 games that he has played in the IPL, Smith could only manage to get one fifty and score just 184 runs at an average of 20.44
In this game too, he got played down of a straighter delivery from Pat Cummins, the reason being he wanted to hit the ball hard.
Having played amazing knocks in the Royals’ victories, it was needed that Samson stayed at the crease and build a partnership with others, especially after the fall of two big wickets in Ben Stokes and Steve Smith. But he could barely open his account as he was caught by Dinesh Karthik off a ripper from Shivam Mavi.
Having won this game, KKR and their fans would now pray that either Sunrisers Hyderabad simply lose their game or the game between Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bangalore gets one-sided.
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